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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



TEACHING 



IN SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 



BY 
WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 

I* 

(M.A. Harvard, Ph.D. Yale) 

FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR AT WESTMINSTER SCHOOL; FORMERLY 
INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH AT HARVARD; LAMPSON PRO- 
FESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT YALE; M»MBER 
OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND 
LETTERS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1912, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published August, igza. 



J. S. Gushing Co. —Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



'£CI.A320196 



*1« --t I 



THIS BOOK 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

TO 

MY COLLEAGUES IN THE GOOD C4USE 

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS 

OF CONNECTICUT 



Suppose her some poor keeper of a school 
Whose business is to sit thro' summer months 
And dole out children leave to go and play, 
Herself superior to such lightness — sh^ 
In the arm-chair^ s state and pedagogic pomp — 
To the life, the laughter, sun and youth outside. 

— In A Balcony. 



PREFACE 

This book is not so egotistically cocksure 
as the title would seem to imply. Quite 
the contrary. My object is not to lay 
down the law for all teachers, but to give 
some hints based on personal experience, 
both from pew and pulpit ; for I sat twenty 
years in front of the desk, and twenty 
years behind it. My book is perhaps con- 
fessional rather than hortatory; for that 
very reason it will irritate some, and help 
others. But I think we often learn more 
from a man's confessions than from his ser- 
mons. Concrete facts and definite sugges- 
tions stick tighter in the mind than abstract 
ideas and loud exhortation ; just as a piece 
of bread is more valuable to a hungry man 
than the sentiment of enthusiasm for hu- 
manity, unaccompanied by specific applica- 

ix 



X Preface 

tion. At all events, I make no apology for 
the personal tone of this work. 

" God uses us to help each other so, 
Lending our minds out." 

W. L. P. 

Florence, 

Tuesday, 2 April, 19 12. 



CONTENTS 

Introductory . . . 

School-teaching and Discipline 

Private School-teaching and Scholarship 

Imagination in Teaching 

The Efficiency of College Teaching 

Education and Instruction 

English Composition . . . . 

English Pronunciation 

Teaching English Literature . 

The Moral Aspect of Teaching 



PAGE 

I 

12 
41 

SI 

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94 
117 
130 
137 
171 



zi 



TEACHING IN SCHOOL AND 
COLLEGE 



INTRODUCTORY 

I DO not know that I could make entirely 
clear to an outsider the pleasure i have 
in teaching. I had rather earn my living by 
teaching than in any other way. In my 
mind, teaching is not merely a life-work, 
a profession, an occupation, a struggle : it 
is a passion. I love to teach. I love to 
teach as a painter loves to paint, as a musi- 
cian loves to play, as a singer loves to sing, 
as a strong man rejoices to run a race. 
Teaching is an art — an art so great and so 
difficult to master that a man or a woman 
can spend a long life at it, without realising 
much more than his limitations and mis- 
takes, and his distance from the ideal. But 



2 Teaching in School and College 

the main aim of my happy days has been 
to become a good teacher, just as every 
architect wishes to be a good architect, and 
every professional poet strives toward per- 
fection. For the chief diiference between 
the ambition of an artist and the ambition 
of a money-maker — both natural and hon- 
ourable ambitions — is that the money- 
maker is after the practical reward of his 
toil, while the artist wants the inner satis- 
faction that accompanies mastery. 

Teaching is an art, not a science : and I 
may as well confess at the start that I know 
nothing whatever of the science of pedagogy. 
I am unable, therefore, to use technical terms, 
as I am not sure what they mean. I know 
a great many children, boys and girls, 
young men and maidens : but I have never 
studied the "psychology of the child," and 
have never attempted to find the way to 
a boy's heart by a scientific formula. The 
science of pedagogy is to-day a recognised 
branch of learning, and there are admirable 
men and women who seem to have achieved 



Introductory 3 

distinction in its pursuit; but I have been 
too busy teaching and studying my own 
speciality — English Literature — to give 
any serious or prolonged attention to that 
or any other science. I am not proud of 
my ignorance, nor in the least disposed to 
slur the importance of fields of knowledge 
through which I have never passed. But 
the study of pedagogy, however valuable 
or interesting, is not the most essential part 
of a teacher's intellectual or moral •utfit. 
One might know all about the science of 
pedagogy, and yet be a poor teacher of Latin, 
English, French, or Mathematics ; just as 
one might be able to pass a brilliant exami- 
nation on the functions of the brain, and 
yet not be an original or profound thinker. 
Perhaps the ideal combination is that sug- 
gested by Herbert Spencer in Education: 
"Science will not make an artist. But in- 
nate faculty alone will not sufiice. Only 
when Genius is married to Science can the 
highest results be produced." The diffi- 
culty is, that I, in common with most 



4 Teaching in School and College 

teachers of literature, have neither genius 
nor science. We are forced to substitute 
sympathy, humour, devotion, and common- 
sense. This book is written to help the 
ordinary teacher, not the inspired genius ; 
he is a rare bird, and no pedestrian can show 
the way of an eagle in the air. 

My attitude toward professional peda- 
gogy is like my attitude toward phrenology. 
I believe that a successful business man can 
tell more about a stranger's character in one 
interview than a professional phrenologist 
can by feeling of the bumps on his skull. 
The ablest professors of Education are 
now employing their time and talents more 
sensibly than formerly; they are studying 
and teaching the history of education, and 
they are endeavouring to connect school 
and college in a logically progressive way. 

The teacher must be a living sacrifice. 
He should be consumed with ambition, but 
his ambition should be to promote the wel- 
fare of others, rather than to further his own 
advancement. The great prizes of life — 



Introductory 5 

wealth and fame — are not for him, and 
must be resolutely forgotten at the outset. 
His aim is twofold : the enlargement of 
knowledge in his chosen field, and the ele- 
vation of his pupils. I say he is a living 
sacrifice, because he must give up not only 
the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and 
the pride of life, but also what seems to him 
important work, when the needs of his pupils 
require it. The teacher must be accessible. 
Personal contact with the student^ is all- 
important. Every teacher in school or 
college should have regular ofHce hours out- 
side of his lectures or recitations, where he 
may be consulted. But he cannot stop 
there. Even if interrupted at other times, 
and when engaged in special study, by the 
visit of a student, he should drop his work 
and see him — except under extraordinary 
circumstances, like ill health, writing that 
must be finished at a certain hour, or some 
real emergency. "That one soul should 
remain in ignorance who^ was capable of 
knowledge, that I call a tragedy." We hear 



6 Teaching in School and College 

a great deal to-day about "original work," 
"productive work," but the truly productive 
work on the part of the' teacher is the work 
that produces results in the mind and in the 
character of his pupils, and they remember 
the personal contact, the timely hint, the 
friendly attitude, long after they have for- 
gotten the answers they studied for the 
examination. Such men as Dean Briggs of 
Harvard and Dean Wright of Yale have been 
productive in the highest sense of the word. 
The life of a devoted and conscientious 
teacher has much hardship, nervous strain, 
drudgery, and petty annoyance ; therefore, 
no one should become a teacher who does 
not love his art, and who is not actuated by 
a sincere desire to perform some service in 
the world. A high purpose "makes drudg- 
ery divine." But there are selfish compen- 
sations and rewards in the teaching pro- 
fession, just as there are in all others. Aca- 
demic life in school or college is delightful to 
men and women of scholarly tastes ; one is 
removed from the sordid and material side 



Introductory 7 

of the struggle, and one's associations and 
friendships are based on a community of 
intellectual interest. One does not dwell in 
a daily atmosphere of cloth and pork, and it 
is a blessed thing to be indifferent to the 
stock-market. I have never read through 
a stock report or a newspaper column of 
stock quotations. I do not even understand 
the meaning of such expressions as "pre- 
ferred stock" or ''debentures." In view of 
my gross ignorance of these things, I try to 
refrain from too arrogant criticism of the 
morality of business men and politicians, 
who in the dust and heat face problems that 
never come to me, and of which I really 
know nothing. I heard a commercial travel- 
ler say that in two weeks he had to meet more 
temptations than the man who did his work 
in a chair faced in a year. We teachers 
have, or ought to have, peace of mind. I 
took luncheon in a down-town merchants' 
club in New York, and I have not forgotten 
the anxious and worried faces of the candi- 
dates for indigestion. Then I brought a 



8 Teaching in School and College 

business man for the first time in his Hfe to 
lunch at a club in a small university town 
where most of the members were engaged in 
daily work of a non-material kind. His 
sole comment was, "How happy everyone 
seems in this place !/' The teacher also has 
the summer vacation, which he spends in 
study, in travel, or in rest — at any rate he 
has the chance to acquire new ideas by the 
change from routine. Furthermore, the 
teacher has, in many instances, intellec- 
tual freedom — a wonderful thing. He can 
think and say what he likes. The man of 
business must be careful to say nothing that 
will injure his affairs, or those of his ' em- 
ployers ; the lawyer is naturally forced to 
make his convictions, if possible, coincide 
with those of his clients ; the politician is 
eternally thinking of his constituents, of 
his ''fences," or of his party; but in a high- 
class ,^ university the professor has a free 
mind and a free tongue. This is proved by 
the way teachers in the same institution 
differ openly on everything from God to the 



Introductory 9 

tariff. President Eliot told me once, and 
I think it a fine saying, "Prudence is not 
an especially desirable virtue in a college 
professor." 

But all these are selfish considerations, put 
in here simply to make the picture true. 
The real compensation is in the very hap- 
piness of teaching, of practising a great art 
that one loves with all one's soul. And still 
more satisfactory is the delight of having 
permanently influenced certain pupils, of 
having made their lives richer, fuller, and 
better. I sat in the smoking-car of the little 
branch train leaving the Grand Canyon in 
Arizona. The regular fireman of the loco- 
motive had a day off, and he came and sat 
with me. I said to him, "This has been a 
new experience for me, this Canyon ; it 
is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. 
Does it affect you the same way ? Of course 
you see it every day. Does it seem won- 
derful to you I or is it just the beginning 
and the end of the day's run.^" He 
replied, "Do you want to know what I 



lo Teaching in School and College 

think of it ? " and then he quoted word for 
word the whole of Bryant's Thanatopsis, 
Now I suppose some poor, underpaid school- 
mistress had taught the boy that poem, and 
this was her reward. Can one ask for any- 
thing better ? Active gratitude and friend- 
ship on the part of the pupil toward the 
teacher are most encouraging and gratify- 
ing ; but often where there is no display of 
feeling, and no sign of recognition, the real 
work has been done, and done with per- 
manent results. And so long as the pupils 
live, the teacher is not forgotten. I re- 
member every teacher I ever had. Some I 
recall with gratitude and reverence, some 
with cordial dislike, some almost with pity ; 
but I have forgotten none. 

There never has been in the world's his- 
tory a period when it was more worth while 
to be a teacher than in the twentieth cen- 
tury ; for there was never an age when such 
vast multitudes were eager for an education, 
or when the necessity of a liberal education 



Introductory 1 1 

was so generally recognised. The astound- 
ing growth of institutions like the Corre- 
spondence Schools has surprised even their 
most optimistic promoters. It would seem 
as though the whole world were trying to 
lift itself to a higher plane of thought. And 
to those of us who teach literature, it is 
pleasant to remember, that, while trash sells 
by the thousand, reprints of standard works 
sell by the million. It is a great thing to 
be a teacher in these present years oi grace ! 



II 

SCHOOL-TEACHING AND DISCIPLINE 

THE disciples called Our Lord "Teacher" 
— a beautiful word ; when people were 
in difficulties, they came to Him for help : 
"Teacher, what shall we do ?" In country- 
schools one hears it to-day, and it is very 
pretty. The child, finding the problem too 
much for its abilities, addresses the pale 
woman at the desk : "Teacher, will you help 
me with this ?" The Authorised Version 
translated the Greek word "teacher" into 
"master," the then English equivalent, and 
the word survives in our private schools 
even unto this day. The teacher must be 
a Leader, a Master, in many cases a Lion- 
tamer, a manager of wild beasts. It is essen- 
tial^ then, that the man or woman who teaches 
should have a strong personality, a domi- 
nant, fearless disposition. He is the Captain 

12 



School-teaching and Discipline 13 

of the ship, and is as much alone in the school- 
room as the captain is alone with his crew 
on the high seas. Those who have never 
taught have no idea of the loneliness and 
responsibility of a school-teacher shut up 
in a big schoolroom with a pack of wild boys 
and girls. The teacher can consult outside 
of hours with his superiors or colleagues ; 
he can get advice and talk over his difficulties. 
But when he goes into the schoolroom, shuts 
the door, takes the lonely seat behmd the 
desk, and looks into the shining morning 
faces, then he is thrown back absolutely on 
himself. No power on earth can help him, 
and nothing can save the situation if he 
makes a blunder. There he needs all his re^ 
sources, all his courage, and infinite patience. 
I remember when I first taught school, 
hardly more than a boy myself, I was sent 
in evenings to preside over _^" study hour." 
This meant that I was to sit behind a desk 
in a big room filled with healthy boys, and 
see that no one spoke or made a noise for an 
hour. I could not interest them, for I, too, 



14 Teaching in School and College 

must say nothing. They came jostling, 
tumbHng, hilariously, in; I rang a bell, 
which meant instant silence. That bell 
gave forth no uncertain sound; I put my 
whole personality into my finger as I pressed 
the electric button, and I tried to make it 
trill just the psychological length of time, 
neither too short nor too long. Yet every 
time I rang that bell I wondered if they 
would really obey. They did, but I never 
recovered from my amazement at the mir- 
acle. I used to look at them as they sat over 
their tasks with puckered brow and wonder, 
since they were so many and united, and I 
was all alone, why they did not devour me. 
To-day, when I see in a big public school, a 
thin, anaemic woman sit behind a desk and 
control a roomfull of young myrmidons, I 
marvel at the mysterious force of the individ- 
ual soul. 

For the actual teaching in a school is the 
least of the teacher's difficulties. Children 
must be led, must be controlled ; order and 
discipline must somehow be maintained, or 



School-teaching and Discipline 15 

the teacher must seek another situation. 
In a private boarding-school the personal 
contact is much closer and much more pro- 
longed. One cannot leave his task, as the 
workman drops his hammer at the stroke of 
twelve. In the school where I learned to 
teach, I rose at seven, presided over a break- 
fast-table, taught various classes from half 
past eight to one, played outdoors with boys 
in the afternoon (how fortunate for me that 
I loved sports even more than the pupils 
did), presided at the dinner-table, presided 
at study hour, and then went upstairs to 
see that the smaller boys took their hot 
baths and retired in good order. Energy, 
cheerfulness, patience, and sympathy are all 
helpful. 

In teaching a class, either in boarding- 
school or day-school, or, for that matter, in 
college, certain practical hints may be not 
impertinent here. Nothing is too minute 
or too trivial that concerns the great art of 
teaching. Constant and tremendous enthu- 
siasm for the subject taught is essential. 



1 6 Teaching in School and College 

While one is actually teaching It, this thing, 
whatever it may be, should seem to be the 
most important thing in time or eternity. 
The late President Harper, who was one of 
the most brilliant teachers I have ever 
known, told me that he had taught the first 
verse of the first chapter of Genesis I have 
forgotten how many thousand times. I 
remarked that he always seemed enthusiastic. 
He said : "Sometimes I feel wildly enthu- 
siastic ; other times I have no enthusiasm at 
all. When I have no enthusiasm, then I 
create It." It is absurd that a teacher 
should allow a headache or a sleepless night 
to affect his teaching. If his health will 
permit him to enter the classroom, he 
must teach with zeal and vigour. 

Just as enthusiasm and force are conta- 
gious, so are lassitude and Indifference. I 
asked a student once what was the matter 
with a certain teacher. "Well," he said, 
"our classroom is a race." "A race?" 
"Yes, It's a race to see who will get to sleep 
first, the class or the teacher." There are 



School-teaching and Discipline 17 

men and women engaged in teaching who 
are such ciphers in the classroom that they 
might just as well teach by telephone, and 
have a phonograph on the desk to record the 
pupils' answers. 

And the teacher who emanates force, in 
some altogether mysterious manner, gets it 
back. The students react on the man be- 
hind the desk. I do not know how many 
times I have risen in the morning feeling so 
weary and 111 that I wondered if I cotMd get 
to the college. Then at the end of the hour's 
teaching, I have felt a veritable glow of life 
and energy. I know that virtue has gone out 
of me, but some kind of vigour has taken its 
place. 

A teacher should never begin with an 
apology — ignorance of the subject, lack of 
time, ill health, etc. But a teacher should 
never bluff. Every man or woman should 
acknowledge a mistake when pointed out to 
him by a pupil, and be grateful for it. 
"Every schoolboy knows" things that the 
teacher has forgotten, or perhaps never 



1 8 Teaching in School and College 

knew. Hardly a man en any college faculty 
could pass all the entrance requirements. 
And if a student asks a question which the 
teacher cannot answer, confess ignorance 
at once. This will sometimes happen in 
one's own subject. No matter. The stu- 
dents respect a teache^ who is truthful, and 
will believe him when he ] /cs speak out of an 
abundance of knowledge. The very first 
pupils to see through a teacher who dodges 
questions or attempts to cover ignorance are 
the bluffers, for they understand the art of 
bluffing by experience, and cannot be fooled. 
Once a teacher has a reputation for bluffing, 
he is lost. The students who cheat and the 
students who bluff never forgive a teacher 
for these sins. They exact a much higher 
standard of us than they set for themselves. 
This is quite right. We are their leaders. 

Never praise an individual pupil in the 
presence of the class. This is fatal, for the 
teacher must not be suspected of having 
favourites. And it is hard on the one 
praised, as he will soon find out. It is 



School-teaching and Discipline 19 

difficult resolutely to refrain from doing 
this. There are times when the recitation 
drags abominably, when a succession of 
failures or utterly stupid answers makes the 
teacher's heart sick. Then he calls on the 
one boy or girl who is always prepared, 
always attentive, always intelligent. A 
brilliant answer is balm to the soul, but no 
comment on it should be made. The way 
to encourage good pupils, stimulate their 
ambition, and get the very best out of jhem, 
is to ask them singly to remain after class, 
or to seize an opportunity when it presents 
itself, and express pleasure in their efforts, 
suggest a good book to read, or let them see 
in some way that they have attracted your 
attention and made an impression on your 
mind. A student never forgets an encour- 
aging private word, when it is given with 
sincere respect and admiration. I once 
asked a college junior to remain a moment 
as the class was passing out, and when we 
were alone, I told him how much I appre- 
ciated his work. He said that that was the 



20 Teaching in School and College 

first time in his life either iri school or col- 
lege that any teacher had spoken to him 
personally and commended his efforts. Of 
course he outdid himself after that, know- 
ing that I expected great things of him, 
and he later became a specialist in the 
subject I was teaching. : 

If it is important, and I am sure it is, 
never to praise an individual student in the 
presence of the class, it is far more important 
never to make fun of a dull student, or a 
bad recitation ; and it is an absolute rule, to 
which there are no exceptions under any 
conceivable circumstances, never to use 
sarcasm toward an individual student be- 
fore his mates. This may become a terribly 
dangerous habit, and it is one that grows 
with astonishing speed. The teacher is 
doing a cheap and utterly contemptible 
thing — raising a laugh at the expense of an 
individual who is at his mercy. It is an 
awkward thing to play with souls. You 
may arouse momentary admiration for your 
wit, but it is probable that you have killed 



School-teaching and Discipline 21 

forever the chance to influence the victim 
of your tyranny. This boy or girl is lost to 
you, and sometimes years later he will 
remember you with a flush of anger. It is 
diflicult to avoid sarcasm and ridicule in 
certain instances — some students leave 
such wonderful openings and supply such 
golden opportunities for your wit. Resist 
this temptation. 

Treat good and bad recitations with 
apparently equal respect. Teachers are 
always eager to have their pupils respect 
them, but how many teachers really respect 
their pupils ^ There are teachers who lis- 
ten to good recitations or to requests for 
information with grinning condescension, 
and to poor recitations with contempt. 
Assume that every pupil is seriously inter- 
ested and doing his best, and you will have 
less trouble. We had a teacher at school 
when I was a boy who began each recitation 
by calling on two or three, and then wearily 
remarked, "Now we'll hear from the dunces." 
These latter felt classified, and made no 



22 Teaching in School and College 

attempt to rise from the slough. If a stu- 
dent makes systematically bad or stupid 
recitations, speak to him privately : "This 
subject seems very difficult to you. I am 
sorry to be forced every day to give you a 
low mark. Unless you improve, you must 
know you cannot possibly pass. Is there 
any suggestion I can make that will help 
you ?" A little conversation like that can- 
not do any harm, and may accomplish much 
good. The pupil will be cured of any sus- 
picion that the teacher is "down on him" 
(a common superstition among students), 
he will know that the teacher is not indiffer- 
ent, but really anxious that he should do 
better, and he will make that renewed effort 
that invariably follows personal attention. 
Always remember that the business of the 
teacher is not to see how difficult and odious 
he can make his subject, not to see how many 
boys and girls he can catch off their guard, 
not to blow out the lamp of the mind with 
the chill wind of indifference, but to get the 
highest results out of each individual stu- 
dent committed to his care. 



School-teaching and Discipline 23 

The teacher should never lose his temper 
in the presence of the class. If a man, he 
may take refuge in profane soliloquies ; if a 
woman, she may follow the example of one 
sweet-faced and apparently tranquil girl — 
go out in the yard and gnaw a post; but 
there must be no display of rage before the 
clear eyes of children. When I taught 
school, there were times when the indiffer- 
ence, stupidity, flippancy, or silliness of the 
class brought me suddenly to such a pitch of 
rage, that I dared not trust myself to speak ; 
I would clutch the arms of my chair, and 
swallow foam until I felt complete self- 
command; then I could speak with quiet 
gravity. The boys all saw what was the 
matter with me, and learned something not 
in the book. I can still feel on my face the 
claws of a female teacher who put them there 
forty years ago. I suppose I was inatten- 
tive, or whispering to my neighbour, or doing 
something forbidden : the woman suddenly 
left the platform, rushed down the aisle, 
seized me on the mouth, and apparently 



24 Teaching in School and College 

tried to dislocate my jaw. It was impres- 
sive, but not edifying. Every time a teacher 
flies into a passion in the schoolroom, he is 
sure either to do or to say something fooHsh 
— something that for the moment brings 
him below the level of the intelligence of the 
flock. He will bitterly regret it afterwards, 
for he will find that it is harder to climb 
than to fall, and he has all that lost ground 
to recover. 

When penalties must be given, it is better 
to give them more in sorrow than in anger. 
I have seen teachers who threw out penalties 
in impetuous rage, losing all the moral effect 
of the punishment. I have seen other 
teachers impose penalties with a triumphant 
laugh, as though they were playing a game 
with the children, and had made a clever 
checkmate. '^Ha ! ha ! that will cost you 
two marks ! " A healthy child then sets 
his brain to work in the endeavour next 
time to outwit the antagonist. ''Stinking 
old fool ! I'll show him ! " says the lad 
to himself. Penalties should be given as 



School-teaching and Discipline 25 

though they hurt the teacher as much as 
the criminal, as though for the moment 
the boy had really sunk low in the teacher's 
good opinion, had done something that 
only continuous good behaviour could re- 
pair. It is well to have a moment of elo- 
quent silence Intervene between the offence 
and the punishment, and then have the 
penalty fall like fate. 

For this reason, bad marks for misbe- 
haviour and disciplinary penalties should be 
given as seldom as possible. : Familiarity 
breeds contempt. Those teachers who are 
always handing down demerits are always 
having trouble. Every penalty should be 
an event In the life of the pupil. It is inter- 
esting to observe how lightly children re- 
gard the very same penalty when inflicted 
by one teacher, and how deeply it hurts when 
inflicted by another. The reason is that 
children have no respect for some teachers, 
while for others they will do everything to 
stand high in their regard. And while it is 
important to give penalties very rarely, it is 



26 Teaching in School and College 

still more important never to take them off. 
The pupil must reaHse that when he receives 
a bad mark, nothing on earth can remove it. 
I well remember two teachers in the same 
school. One began the year by giving out 
demerits very freely and for the most trivial 
things ; then at the end of the school day, 
the culprits flocked around him, begging 
him to remove certain of the afflictions, 
promising to do better, saying they did not 
mean to be bad. To some he yielded. 
The result was that for months he had to go 
through this process every day, and when- 
ever a boy received a penalty, he had the 
hope of getting it cancelled. The other 
teacher gave only two or three demerits the 
first week. Each boy came to him after- 
ward, and asked for their removal. The 
teacher said, ''I am very sorry — I never 
give a penalty if I can help it, but once given, 
I shall never under any circumstances take 
it off. Even if I find I have made a mis- 
take, and given it to an innocent boy, I 
shall not take it off. And I shall try not to 



School-teaching and Discipline 27 

make any mistakes." After the first week, 
no boy ever asked him to remove a bad mark, 
but they all endeavoured to avoid receiving 
one. 

Whenever it is possible, — it is not always 
possible, — it is best not to rebuke an individ- 
ual by name in the presence of the class. 
Sometimes this permanently antagonises the 
victim, sometimes it makes a hero out of 
him in the estimation of his mates. When 
there is a little plague spot of irruption in 
the class room, when there is individual dis- 
order or inattention, it is better to speak to 
the class as a whole, rather than to single 
out one person by name. And if there is 
one boy or girl who persists in repeated 
offences of this nature, then it is well to 
keep the culprit a moment after class, and, 
after everyone has gone out, to talk very 
frankly, very earnestly, but never angrily or 
sarcastically with him. Sometimes this 
method will result not only in complete ref- 
ormation, but in transforming the individ- 
ual from a leader of disturbance into an 



28 Teaching in School and College 

influence for good order. Very few boys 
or girls can resist a quiet personal talk. And 
those who are wilfully and deliberately bad 
are terribly afraid of it, because they suffer 
such embarrassment and discomfort. I re- 
member one boys' school where the teacher 
was famous for these interviews, and the re- 
mark of a young villain, "Say, I'd rather 
he'd lick me any day than talk to me !" 

. It is a great advantage to a teacher to be 
physically big and physically strong; and 
if the teacher be a woman, to have robust 
health. She will need it all in the course of 
an average day. One admirable discipli- 
nary officer in a college told me that in his 
many years of teaching he had always thanked 
God he was over six feet high. He could 
generally look down on the offender, while 
the poor wretch had to look up to him. 
Still discipline, after all, is a matter of per- 
sonality rather than avoirdupois. There 
are men of colossal size who somehow 
never succeed in enforcing discipline; the 
worst teacher I had in college was six feet 



School-teaching and Discipline 29 

four. There are other men, small and un- 
impressive at first sight, who would be 
lost in a crowd, and yet who have no diffi- 
culty in enforcing the most rigid discipline. 
When I was five years old, I was sent to 
the Webster public school in New Haven, 
the "toughest" district school I ever saw. 
The majority of the boys and girls came 
from streets where no well-dressed boy 
could walk with impunity. I remember 
the horrible fear I had of 'Hhe micks 
of Morocco Street," a fear well-founded, 
for I was small even for my age, and fre- 
quently suffered at the hands of these 
merciless brigands. How my heart aches 
now for the women who had to teach in that 
school ! The unspeakably obscene language 
of the boys at recess, the filth and dirt they 
brought into the school room, the naive 
gestures of physical necessity they made 
when they raised the other hand for per- 
mission to "go out," the insolent manner in 
which they answered the teacher's questions, 
the ribald laughter that resounded on occa- 



30 Teaching in School and College 

sions skilfully prepared to produce it ! No 
boy ever rose to recite without finding pins, 
tacks (and I remember one file) put in his 
chair to greet his downsitting — then the 
howl of rage, the back-handed blow, and the 
teacher's vain remonstrance. Spitballs, 
heavy with their damp freight, flew around 
the room, falling on the just and the unjust. 
Not a day passed that the teacher did not 
take out the whip, and lash the boys across 
the palms. 

Over this whirlwind of childish savagery, 
disorder, corruption, and sin a little man sat 
enthroned as principal. Mr. Lewis was the 
supreme court, and no boy, however wicked 
or fearless, spoke his name above an awed 
whisper. Once in a while he would walk 
through our room, very casually, without 
looking at anybody. The most absolute si- 
lence marked his advent. He seemed to me 
to be about eleven feet high, and to breathe 
forth threatening and slaughter. Years after- 
ward, when I returned to New Haven, I saw 
him, and marvelled at his tiny frame and 



School-teaching and Discipline 31 

puny appearance." Was this gray-haired 
little man the terror of my childhood ? 
Yet the biggest, the roughest, and the most 
daredevil boys in the school regarded him 
with mortal terror. He stood serene and 
quiet, the bulwark against anarchy. I 
remember one terribly tough, strong Irish 
lad, John Devanney, who was my hero. I 
secretly sent him a Christmas present at the 
school celebration, and he waved it at me 
triumphantly, saying, "Huh ! my present is 
a lot better than yours ! " He did not know 
that I was the donor, and I did not dare tell 
him. He was my hero, because when I 
was whipped by the teacher, I cried ; when 
he was whipped, he laughed. I can see him 
now, standing up before the class, the female 
teacher hitting his hand with the whip with 
all her might, while he laughed condescend- 
ingly at her feeble efforts. Yet she had her 
trump card. When everything else failed, 
she would say, "I will send you to Mr. 
Lewis," and then the ruddy cheeks of the 
great John Devanney turned pale with fear. 



32 Teaching in School and College 

What Mr. Lewis did to these lads no one 
else ever knew, but strange tales came from 
those mysterious interviews. He was the 
one salvation of the teachers, and for over 
forty years he commanded the situation, 
and made citizens somehow out of that un- 
promising material. I remember one day, 
coming out after school was over, he spoke 
to me kindly, with a smile. I was in such 
terror that I could say nothing ; but as soon 
as I got around the corner, I ran for my life, 
lest he should call me back and eat me. A 
small man and a great personality ! 
^ For the average boy or girl, with ordinary 
health and ordinary ability, I believe the 
public school is better than the private. It 
is true that in a public school there are many 
undesirable pupils — it is often a school of 
bad manners. Girls may become vulgar 
and slangy, boys may become coarse and 
foul-mouthed. Good home influences, re- 
ligious training, refinement, and the real 
companionship of father and mother will 
more than offset this. The small boy is a 



School-teaching and Discipline 3 3 

naturally dirty little animal, and the lan- 
guage, pictures, and associations in his envi- 
ronment at a public school are often atro- 
ciously bad. Still, the public school is an 
absolute democracy — the only pure democ- 
racy to be found in America. He lives in a 
field of free competition — he rises or falls, 
swims or sinks on his merits. In scholar- 
ship he competes fairly with all his class- 
mates, and the son of the labourer has the 
same chance as the son of the millionnaire. 
If he does not keep up to a certain grade, 
down he goes to the lower room, and no 
influence or outside aid can save him. The 
schools are all crowded, and those who can- 
not or will not study must drop out under 
the merciless law of competition. His com- 
rades, both boys and girls, are imbued 
with the spirit of democracy, and God help 
the little snob ! If he is fair and square, 
asking no special favours, he will form many 
friendships and stand high with his fellows. 
If he is selfish, conceited, eccentric, his class- 
mates will take it out of him, or drive him 



34 Teaching in School and College 

away. He sees all kinds of life, learns the 
pure and noble along with the vulgar and 
obscene, and literally fights his way upward. 
He learns to respect boys and girls for what 
they are and for what they can do, rather 
than for the backing they have or the homes 
that support them. If he does not go to 
college, he cannot graduate from a high 
school without some knowledge of all sides 
of human nature, and he is prepared to meet 
and to understand all sorts of people. If 
he does go to college, he will probably go 
with better habits of study, with more ambi- 
tion to excel in scholarship, and with more 
self-reliance than if he came from a private 
fitting school. 

On the other hand, if a boy or girl is in 
poor health, or very far behind in certain 
studies, he is perhaps better off in a good pri- 
vate school. He will learn good manners, 
will associate with children of good breeding 
for the most part, and will have definite per- 
sonal moral and religious training. The 
driving out of the Bible and prayers from 



School-teaching and Discipline 35 

many public schools is a narrow-minded, 
stupid, and silly policy, as the Bible and 
Christianity are the real foundation of Anglo- 
Saxon citizenship. In almost all private 
schools the influences are positively good, 
and the boys and girls who graduate from 
them are at home in cultivated society. 
Then the health of individual students is 
carefully attended to, and those who are 
backward in certain studies are personally 
drilled and coached. If the boy goes to 
college, he enters with a circle of fiends, 
and his way is easier and less lonely. For 
this very reason, he may be less self-re- 
liant, less independent, and apt to believe 
that his little circle really constitutes public 
opinion. Cowardice and conceit are no 
more in favour in an exclusive private school 
than they are elsewhere, though they may 
not be eliminated by such drastic measures 
as in a public institution. 

If a boy goes to a private school after he 
has attended a public one, it is sometimes 
a happy combination. But there are some 



36 Teaching in School and College 

private schools that will not take pupils 
after they have reached a certain age. On 
the other hand, when a child goes to a pri- 
vate school very young, he fails to become 
really acquainted with his parents, and is 
sometimes actually unfitted for domestic 
life. There are boys who go to an exclusive 
school at the age of ten ; they live only with 
rich men's sons ; the summer vacations they 
do not spend at home, but with house- 
parties in the country, or camping out lux- 
uriously in the woods, or travelling in Eu- 
rope. Then they go to college, and then to a 
professional school ; so that there are many 
cases of boys who from the age of ten to the 
age of twenty-six have hardly lived at home 
at all — have practically lived in a bachelors' 
club for sixteen years, and are unacquainted 
with their parents. When their parents 
are lacking in the character, morality, reli- 
gion, refinement, and good sense necessary to 
bring up children, this may be not so unfor- 
tunate. 

When a teacher, either in a public or a 



School-teaching and DiscipUne 37 

private school, discovers and can prove that 
a boy or girl Is deliberately and wilfully bad, 
and when all means undertaken for Improve- 
ment have failed, it is the manifest duty of 
the teacher to see that this individual Is per- 
manently expelled from the Institution. 
Every teacher is in a position of trust; he 
has a duty toward the parents who have 
entrusted their children to his care. One 
evil boy or girl can corrupt''many others, and 
can really lower the standard of an entire 
institution. Expulsion Is the sole remedy. 
I am convinced by observation that It Is not 
applied often enough, especially in private 
schools. ' 

Fathers and mothers can help the school 
principal and the school-teacher immensely 
not merely by taking an intelligent interest 
in the studies of their children, talking with 
them sympathetically about their lessons, 
their teachers, and the general life of the 
school, but by loyally supporting the dis- 
cipline of the Institution. There are many 
foolish parents who take the child's part 



38 Teaching in School and College 

when he imagines he has a grievance. Al- 
though the normal mother loves her child 
better than she loves herself, better than 
she loves life, and although nothing fills 
her with more delight than to have the child 
make a good record at school, and nothing 
tortures her more cruelly than to have the 
child fall into disgrace, it is in nearly all cases 
a bad thing for the child to have the mother 
an active partisan against school discipline. 
The parents can show the utmost tender- 
ness toward their offspring, and the utmost 
sympathy when misfortunes come, and yet 
staunchly support the rules of the school. 
No teacher ever expects that a mother will 
believe her child to be wilfully bad, or will 
admit it if she does believe it. I always 
admire a mother when she comes to me and 
says that her son has been unfortunate, per- 
haps, or weak, but surely not evil ; if a 
mother will not stand up for her son, who 
will ^ But parents, in the interests of their 
children, should support school discipline, 
even when their own lamb is gored. One of 



School-teaching and Discipline 39 

the greatest difficulties public school-teachers 
have to contend with is the visit of an irate 
father bringing his child, and insisting on 
better treatment. In Germany when a boy 
gets a whipping at school, he receives an- 
other when he comes home; in America, 
when a boy gets the whipping, the father 
goes to school and tries to whip the teacher. 
If a teacher occupies a subordinate posi- 
tion either in school or college, subordinate 
to the head of the department, or subordi- 
nate to the principal, he should remember 
that the obedience he demands from his 
pupils must be shown by him toward those 
higher in authority. Obey orders cheerfully, 
and try to carry out faithfully the policy of 
your superiors. If your Head is a man you 
cannot respect, do the best you can under the 
circumstances, and do not indulge in innu- 
endo : if the circumstances become intoler- 
able, leave as quietly as possible, and seek 
another field for your efforts. But remem- 
ber that it is possible you may be mistaken, 
and the superior officer right. You do not 



40 Teaching in School and College 

know it all. Work for the good of the insti- 
tution, and not for yourself. Above all, 
never try to create a party among the pupils, 
never organise them into a personal sym- 
pathetic body-guard. In matters of school 
or college discipline or policy, never take the 
pupils into your confidence. The business 
of the teacher is not to give confidences, but 
to receive them. 



Ill 



PRIVATE SCHOOL-TEACHING AND SCHOLAR- 
SHIP 

WE hear a great deal nowadays of the 
lack of enthusiasm for scholarship 
among university students ; this is n<^ local 
issue, but a difficulty recognised everywhere, 
and one lamented by every teacher. The 
faculties of all American universities are 
constantly busy devising schemes by which 
the ambition of students may be stimulated, 
and their attention occasionally diverted 
to the curriculum. Some think this can be 
accomplished by severe penalties for neglect 
and indifference, others believe in the temp- 
tation of prizes and the frequent publication 
of honour lists. But from Seattle to Florida, 
in urban and in country institutions, the 
anxiety of the professors is audible : "What 
can we do to make the students study ? " 

41 



42 Teaching in School and College 

Athletics are only one obstacle, and not the 
most formidable; there are the secret 
societies, which afflict schools as well as 
colleges, and obsess the minds of ten times 
the number of successful candidates ; there 
are the undergraduate organisations, devoted 
to almost every conceivable object except 
the course of study ; there are the men who 
are "working their way through," and have 
no time to prepare any lessons ; there are the 
college papers, where some young gentle- 
men toil longer and harder than they ever 
will again ; there are dances, concerts, 
visits to a neighbouring city; there are 
extraordinary and baffling cases of chronic 
ill health and complicated dentistry, that 
require frequent absences, and where the 
patient is able to do everything except at- 
tend classes ; there is the call of the blood. 
In reading the Confessions of an Oxford 
Don, I obtained much wicked delight in 
finding that the same problems that trouble 
American deans and faculties are in Eng- 
land just as prominent and just as difficult 



Private Schools and Scholarship 43 

to solve ; the Don especially lamented the 
vast number of Oxonians who require the con- 
stant attention of London dentists. But, 
although extracurriculum activities are on 
the increase, I do not think there is any less 
enthusiasm for study than in former times. 
I do not believe there was ever any epoch in 
the world's history when the majority of 
young men sincerely regarded hard appli- 
cation to books as the joy of life. The real 
difficulty that every professor has tc^ con- 
tend with is eternal youth. 
' How much love for study is there in the 
home, and how much enthusiasm for learn- 
ing in the private fitting schools ? If a 
boy's father and mother bring him up among 
books, if they intelligently discuss his school 
courses and his general reading with him, 
if their own opinions command his respect, 
he will generally shine as an intellectual star 
at college. Nay, if the boy's mother really 
prefers her son's proficiency in scholarship 
to his social success among his mates, he 
will probably give the faculty no trouble. 



44 Teaching in School and College 

Unfortunately, there are many silly mothers 
who exalt membership in secret societies and 
social popularity to such an extent that the 
boy himself loses all sense of proportion. 
And what a perpetual and unmitigated 
nuisance a silly mother is to the head-master 
of a school ! Visiting the school, petting 
the already pampered weakling, siding with 
him against discipline, asking for special 
privileges, doing everything to destroy the 
main object of his residence. 

I have observed a paradox in some of our 
more expensive private secondary schools. 
The boy is occasionally morally superior to 
his parents. Among the enormous variety 
of privileges that a rich man can buy, is a 
Christian education; a religious environ- 
ment for his oifspring. There are cases 
where a man without much or any religious 
training himself, and without any enthusi- 
asm for morality, sends his son to the very 
best school, just as he buys him the very 
best clothes. . Fortunately nearly all these 
schools inculcate Christian manhood — the 



Private Schools and Scholarship 45 

very atmosphere is religious. Thus we have 
the paradox of a boy coming to college, living 
absolutely sober and straight, taking a prom- 
inent part in prayer-meetings and reli- 
gious work ; and his parents are either 
frivolous or dissipated, or both. An under- 
graduate at Yale laid before me in all sin- 
cerity this problem : "I do not want to 
drink. Young as I am, I have seen many 
people injured by excess, and I would rather 
not drink at all. But what am I to^o ? I 
don't want to hurt father's feelings." 

It is quite right that character should 
be placed before scholarship — character 
should be placed before everything else. 
Yet the best schools are unconsciously In 
one direction working against scholarship. 
They must, of course, prepare the boy to pass 
his college examinations, and they know how 
to do it. But a boy may pass all kinds of 
examinations, and yet have no real love of 
learning and no Ideal of scholarship. Men 
of the world and jaunty journalists often 
ridicule the great college athletes, and ironi- 



46 Teaching in School and College 

cally ask if the half-back and the pitcher 
understand the practical value of a college 
education. They shake their heads over 
the pictures of a drop-kicker, and remark 
that when the lad gets out into the world, 
he will find that his athletic reputation will 
not help him in earning his living. But 
as a matter of fact, exactly the contrary 
is the case, and humorously enough, it is 
particularly the case in those fields of human 
endeavour that are ostensibly scholarly. 
The shortest cut to an immediate big salary 
in school-teaching is not by the curriculum 
route, but through the foot-ball gridiron. 
In the attempt to secure a good position as 
a school-teacher, the valedictorian stands 
absolutely no chance whatever against the 
captain of the football team. Every year 
I observe the same curiosity : three or four 
seniors, intelligent and scholarly, members 
of Phi Beta Kappa, trying hard to find a 
position to teach school, and in the end 
forced to accept a low salary ; while two or 
three of their classmates, whose fame rests 



Private Schools and Scholarship 47 

solely on athletics, have an embarrassment 
of choice, and are offered really extraordi- 
nary sums to teach Latin, or English, or 
Mathematics or History in excellent private 
schools. I should, therefore, advise all young 
men who wish to teach, not to neglect their 
studies, but to achieve as much distinction 
in athletics as their bodily frame will per- 
mit. It is a great financial asset. 

The constant letters that I receive from 
school principals and head-masters *all say 
the same thing. They indicate a distrust 
of pure scholarship. "What I want is a 
Man, not a Scholar." To one principal I 
wrote to the effect that the prominent under- 
graduate he was after was a fine fellow, but 
had no intention of devoting his life to 
teaching : he merely wished to teach for two 
years to accumulate a sum of money, and 
was then going to study law. "So much 
the better," came the immediate reply; 
"men who want to teach are useless. Give 
me the all-around good fellow, man of sense, 
physical strength, and personal charm. The 



48 Teaching in School and College 

fact that he does not want to become a 
teacher is the best possible qualification." 
What then are we to expect ? If gold rust, 
what shall iron do ? 

I remember the pathetic reply given by 
one scholarly candidate to a head-master. 
The latter asked what he could do in athlet- 
ics, and the poor starveling replied, "I 
can- swim." He was rejected. Athletics, 
of course, give young teachers a great influ- 
ence over boys. When I was twenty-three 
years old, I secured a position to teach in a 
private school, and although I was not 
chosen on my athletic record, for I had none, 
I was exceedingly glad when I came to per- 
form my duties, that I could play base-ball, 
football, tennis, and hockey as well as any 
of the boys I taught History. I had always 
loved, and always shall love, athletic sports, 
and this fact made my teaching and my 
discipline comparatively easy for me. 

The great difficulty is that in most in- 
stances where teachers are selected, not for 
their scholarship, or for their love of teach- 
ing, but for their foot-ball and base-ball 



Private Schools and Scholarship 49 

records, it is impossible for them to communi- 
cate to the boys a real enthusiasm for learn- 
ing. A man cannot give what he does not 
possess, and what he has never understood. 
The result is that many of our colleges are 
filled with splendid young men for whom the 
curriculum is either a side issue or a positive 
nuisance. I see no escape from this vicious 
circle in the relations of fitting schools and 
colleges. The head-masters must have 
young teachers of energy, and magifetism, 
whom the boys will love and follow; but 
so long as scholarship is at a discount in the 
selection of teachers, we cannot wonder at 
the lack of enthusiasm for study displayed 
by undergraduates. The ideal is where 
the athlete is also a very high scholar, and 
this fortunately sometimes occurs ; but I 
have known instances where the athlete was 
either so stupid or so indifferent that he 
remained for four years close to the foot of 
the class, had the utmost difficulty in getting 
his degree, and was then immediately offered 
an enormous salary to teach ! 



50 Teaching in School and College 

I am not, of course, blaming the head-mas- 
ters : I am merely trying to explain a situa- 
tion. And it must be remembered that great 
athletes are often better taught in athletics 
than they are in their college classrooms. 
They know what good teaching and faith- 
ful drill mean, and perhaps they are able to 
apply this knowledge when it comes to 
teaching something like Latin or English. 
Every teacher and professor in the country 
ought to go at least once to foot-ball practice, 
and watch the patient, energetic, and efficient 
coaching. It is real teaching. I learned a 
great deal watching a Yale graduate who had 
come all the way from Minnesota to New 
Haven to give instruction in foot-ball to a 
few candidates. He took two men to a cor- 
ner of the field, and for over an hour drilled 
them on one minute point of the game. He 
went over this experiment at least a hun- 
dred times with absolutely unflagging energy 
and enthusiasm. I saw a great light, and 
taught English literature better the next 
morning. 



IV 

IMAGINATION IN TEACHING 

IF a teacher wishes success with pupils, 
he must inflame their imagination. 
The lesson should put the classroom under 
the spell of an illusion, like a great drama. 
Everything abstract, so far as possible, must 
be avoided, and there must be a sddulous 
cultivation of the concrete. If a pupil feels 
the reality of any subject, feels its relation 
to actual life, half the battle is gained. 
Terms must be clothed in flesh and blood. 
When I was a very small boy, my mother 
told me that every night when I went to bed I 
must surely not leave out the stopple in the 
fixed water basin ; to neglect this was danger- 
ous to health, she said. But she insisted that 
it was still more important — I don't yet 
know why — not to leave any standing water 
in the basin. These two things she impressed 

SI 



52 Teaching in School and College 

on my mind. I immediately invented names 
for the two dangers. I called them "Cap- 
tain Stoppleout" and "General Standing 
Water," thus indicating not only that they 
were formidable military foes to be over- 
come, but indicating also the difference in 
their rank. 

It is much easier to teach History and Liter- 
ature with imagination than it is Mathe- 
matics ; yet there are great teachers of 
Mathematics who have made the subject 
actually alive. They are rare. One reason 
why I was a dunce in Mathematics was be- 
cause I could not get an imaginative hold of 
it. Propositions in Geometry interested me 
not in the least. Suppose ABC did equal 
DEF, what of it ? Parallel lines do not 
meet — who cares ? If I could only have 
seen them as two dear and intimate friends, 
doing their best to get together, struggling 
with all their might to touch each other, and 
yet in vain — with the empty assurance that 
they would meet in infinity, a kind of com- 
fortless Nirvana ! Professor Andrew W. 



Imagination in Teaching 53 

Phillips of Yale, an admirable teacher of 
Mathematics, taught the subject with poetic 
imagination and irresistible humour and ob- 
tained good results from most of his pupils. 
I read in a German play that the mathemati- 
cian is like a man who lives in a glass room 
at the top of a mountain covered with eternal 
snow — he sees eternity and infinity all 
about him, but not much humanity. 

There is something fundamentally wrong 
about the teaching of foreign languages In 
our American schools. I cannot give the 
remedy, because. If I were to teach these 
subjects, even supposing that I had the 
necessary training and knowledge, I fear I 
should not get any better results. I studied 
Latin six years, four at school and two at 
college; I studied Greek five years, three 
at school and two at college. Both subjects 
have always been a great inspiration to me, 
and I would not be without this foundation 
for anything. Yet here is the wretched 
truth. Although I always did well in both 
studies, and received as high marks in Latin 



54 Teaching in School and College 

and Greek as I obtained low ones in Mathe- 
matics, at the end of all these years of patient 
and continuous study I could not for the life 
of me read a page of easy Latin or Greek at 
sight. As Upton Sinclair has said, the lines 
were full of words whose appearance was 
familiar, but whose meaning I did not know. 
And the teaching of French and German in 
schools and colleges is singularly barren of 
practical results. I had secured a comfort- 
able seat in a railway carriage at Nurem- 
berg, the carriage on the outside having an 
enormous sign, Nach Munchen, At the last 
moment two men, father and son, sprang in 
breathlessly, placed their bags in the racks, 
and then suddenly the young gentleman 
cried, "Father, does nach mean not?^^ 
"Yes," said the parental authority. "Then 
we are in the wrong train !" and they both 
began feverishly to drag down their baggage. 
I quieted their fears, by telling them that the 
train was going to Munich, their desired 
haven. Apart from the fact that it would 
be a curious railway policy to mark the name 



Imagination in Teaching 55 

of a town whither a train was not going, I 
was a little surprised that so familiar a word 
as nach was unknown to Americans travelling 
in Germany. I said to the handsome youth, 
"I suppose you have never studied Ger- 
man ? " "Oh, yes, I have," and he told me 
that very June he had successfully passed 
the entrance requirement in German at a 
great Eastern university ! 

Faithful, minute grammatical training 
is an absolute essential when one Ijegins to 
study a dead or living tongue. But the 
letter killeth. Grammar without imme- 
diate and specific application is simply an 
unrelated exercise of memory. How faith- 
fully I learned the pages of the Latin and 
Greek grammar, without knowing in the 
least what to do with my store of facts ! 
Once, when I repeated like a parrot the end- 
ings of all Latin feminine nouns — of the 
third declension, was it ? — I rebelled, and 
remarked in the schoolroom, immediately 
after my triumphant rapid-fire perform- 
ance, "I don't see the use of all this." The 



56 Teaching in School and College 

teacher gave me a stinging rebuke, saying it 
was my business to learn what I was told, 
and not to question methods that I knew 
nothing about. I can remember even now 
the prepositions that are followed by the 
subjunctive, and while dressing in the morn- 
ing I used to sing, to an improvised tune, 
those that govern the ablative case. The 
ablative case, God save the mark ! 

When we studied Caesar's Commentaries 
on the Gallic War, a wonderful book, written 
by one of the most interesting men that ever 
lived, I had no idea that Csesar wrote sense : 
I thought he wrote only sentences. Once 
more, the grammar is essential ; but has it 
importance in itself, or only as a help to 
the understanding ? "All Gaul is divided 
into three parts." What is the most impor- 
tant fact in that sentence ? Why, the most 
important fact is just what it says, that the 
country is divided into three parts. It 
would be a tremendously important fact if 
the United States were divided into three 
parts. Yet our teachers seemed to think the 



Imagination in Teaching 57 

important fact in that striking first sentence 
was that Gaul was the subject, and, there- 
fore, nominative. The grammatical con- 
struction of the phrase rather than its living 
meaning was the thing invariably insisted 
on, although we were reading a book full of 
history and human nature. 

Some time later, when we were studying 
the Civil War with Mr. Bernadotte Perrin, 
he recommended us to read Froude's Sketch 
of CcBsar, I read this with extraordinary 
delight, almost with shouts of joy. What a 
man ! Later I saw the situation clearly. 
Here was Caesar, a brilliant statesman ; 
Cassius, a professional politician ; Brutus, a 
Mugwump. Brutus was the type of sincere 
reformer, whose ideals were greater than his 
practical judgm^ent. Wishing to reform the 
state, he unconsciously played into the hands 
of a skilful and unscrupulous professional 
politician, Cassius, and between them they 
succeeded in killing the most useful man in 
the world. 

The Latin language must be taught : the 



58 Teaching in School and College 

teacher cannot spend the time needed for 
drill, in telling interesting and entertaining 
historical anecdotes. But a word in season, 
how good is it ! How it makes the whole 
subject alive and real, and with what energy 
a student will study when his imagination 
is deeply touched ! When we were in college 
one of our Latin teachers was Mr. Ambrose 
Tighe, now a lawyer in St. Paul. Besides 
teaching us Latin, he told us about Roman 
history, Roman institutions, Roman poli- 
tics, Roman personalities. It was a delight 
to enter his class-room, for he was a living 
inspiration. But in doing all this, he in- 
curred the displeasure of higher powers, and 
had to leave. They felt he was too "popu- 
lar," too superficial, and that he shirked the 
hard work of teaching Latin in order to give 
interesting talks. 

But the teacher who teaches History or 
Literature, and does not set fire to the im- 
agination of his pupils, is a failure. Mr. 
James Whitcomb Riley says that, when a 
boy at school, he especially hated History. 



Imagination in Teaching 59 

"It was a dull and juiceless thing." Such a 
pupil must have had a desperately bad 
teacher to entertain such a view of History. 
The teacher is an active force, not a tele- 
phone receiver. In the high school, I 
remember only too well our lessons in Greek 
History. We filed into the room : the 
accomplished lady at the desk touched a 
bell. She called my name. I rose con- 
fidently, for I loved History, and especially 
Greek History. She said, "Well, 'begin." 
I thought I had not heard aright. "What 
did you say?" "I said. Begin"; and she 
got her marking-book ready. To the next 
pupil, she said, "Go on." These were the 
only comments she ever made. Seeing what 
was wanted, I thereafter learned that 
Aristides got his come-uppance six lines 
from the bottom of the left-hand page ; 
that the battle of Marathon began in the 
second paragraph of page so-and-so ; and I 
obtained eventually a good mark. Fortu- 
nately, she could not kill my love of History, 
for I have read it as child and man with 



6o Teaching in School and College 

sympathetic imagination. I wept bitterly 
over the downfall of the Athenian expe- 
dition to Syracuse. How I admired Pe- 
rikles, how I loved Athens, how I hated 
Sparta ! With what raptures of delight I 
followed the career of Epaminondas ! To 
this day, I cannot think of the battle of the 
Metaurus in Roman history, and Hannibal's 
awful disappointment, without a sad sink- 
ing of the heart. And although I have not 
seen for thirty years the school history of 
Rome we studied, I remember word for 
word the rather rhetorical flourish with 
which the historian described Hannibal's 
last hopeless years in Italy. "For four long 
years, in that wild and mountainous country, 
with unabated courage and astounding 
tenacity, the dying lion clung to the land 
that had been so long the theatre of his 
glory." 

What I regret is, that, owing to stupid and 
incompetent teaching, my schoolmates 
hated History with all their might. 

Take the sentence, "Hannibal crossed the 



Imagination in Teaching 6i 

Alps, and descended into Italy." Here are 
eight words, and how shall we teach them so 
that the pupil will never forget this extraor- 
dinary feat ? There are some minds to 
whom the most important facts in this sen- 
tence are that Hannibal is the subject, the 
Alps the object, and so on. But the ordi- 
nary boy or girl cannot get into a state of 
violent excitement over such valuable details. 
Who was Hannibal, anyhow, and what busi- 
ness had he in the Alps ? He was \ man 
from Africa, from a hot climate : such a 
person does not seem qualified for member- 
ship in the Alpine Club. V But he not only 
crossed the Mediterranean, without the 
assistance of the Hamburg-American or 
Norddeutscher-Lloyd, but somehow induced 
a large number of his countrymen to come 
with him — no mean undertaking in itself. 
Then he finally reached the Alps, and they 
all began to climb. There are tourists even 
to-day who complain of difiiculties ; although 
the roads are magnificent, there are tunnels 
and rack-and-pinions, there is the faithful 



62 Teaching in School and College 

and omniscient Baedeker, there are every- 
where, high and low, hotels so luxurious that 
they cost you ten dollars a day, board and 
room extra. But Hannibal had no railways, 
no inns, no tunnels, no roads, and no guides, 
and was among treacherous seas of ice and 
snow, with an army accustomed to a quite 
different climate and environment. Some- 
how or other, he persuaded them ; he led 
them up, and led them down, and brought 
them into Italy in such good condition that 
they gave a terrific thrashing to the best- 
trained soldiers in the world, who were all 
ready to receive them. When the eye of 
the imagination follows Hannibal on this 
expedition, those eight words, "Hannibal 
crossed the Alps, and descended into Italy," 
are full of pictures. We are forced to the 
conviction that Mommsen was right, when 
he wrote, "Hannibal was a great man." 

English Literature above all must be taught 
with the imagination. Is it not unfortunate 
that many mature lovers of literature are 
afraid to have the great English classics 



Imagination in Teaching 63 

taught in the schools, simply because the 
boys and girls may acquire a permanent 
hatred for these books ? The only possible 
objection I can see to teaching the Bible in 
every public and private school, and the sub- 
ject is so important that I am willing to risk 
the danger, is that the pupils may never 
read the great book again. Over and 
over I have asked college students their 
opinion of certain English classics, and their 
expression is one of disgust : "Oh, I tad to 
study that at school." There are fortu- 
nately noble exceptions ; such teachers as the 
late Mr. George, of Newton, really inspired 
their pupils. 

In order that subjects in the public schools 
may be taught with vigour and with imagi- 
nation, it is necessary that the teacher 
should not be overworked and underpaid. 
"It is the curse of this world of want and 
need," said Schopenhauer, "that everything 
must serve and slave for these." The 
teachers in our schools, the vast army of 
faithful, devoted men and women, who wear 



64 Teaching in School and College 

out their lives in discipline and instruction, 
ought to be provided for much more liber- 
ally than is now the case. How can men 
and women teach vigorously day after day 
when their bodies are tired, their nerves 
overstrained, and their salaries insufficient 
to support them decently ? These persons, 
more than any others, hold the future des- 
tiny of our country in their hands. I wish 
that those who have never taught and never 
give a thought to the work of teachers could 
be put in charge of a room of children in a 
district school just one hour. Their nerves 
would be in a frazzle. Yet there are thou- 
sands of delicate and refined women who do 
this hour after hour, day after day, week 
after week ; and then many of them, in the 
summer vacation, when they ought to be in 
a sanatorium, go to a summer school, and 
study strenuously, such is their zeal for 
learning and self-improvement. If only 
the money that is squandered on the build- 
ing of battle ships and firing off expensive 
powder into the air could be spent on 



Imagination in Teaching 65 

teachers ! If the vast" sums wasted on mili- 
tary pensions could be used productively ! 
The teachers in our public schools should not 
be required to teach too many hours, to 
manage too many pupils, and their salaries 
should be substantially raised. It is the 
best possible investment, for it would help 
many who are in desperate straits, and it 
would attract skilled and efficient men and 
women. And it would be well if every 
school-teacher, after a certain period oi ser- 
vice both in public and in private schools, 
could have the sabbatical year enjoyed by 
many college professors. In those rare 
cases where the salary is high, a large pro- 
portion of it could be given ; but in most 
cases, the teacher should have it all. The 
daily grind of teaching is hard and wearing. 
If a teacher had every seventh year free 
from pupils and discipline, and could go to 
Europe for rest, change, and study, he or she 
would be so much richer in intelligence and 
inspiration on the return, so filled with 
renewed life and energy, that the quality 



66 Teaching in School and College 

of the instruction would rise enormously. 
There is nothing quixotic or fantastic about 
this. It would be a solid, permanent advan- 
tage to the country, and it would brighten 
the lives of those who are devoting them- 
selves to the most important service. 



THE EFFICIENCY OF COLLEGE TEACHING 

THE brilliant, original, imaginative, 
and forceful school-teacher is at one 
great disadvantage as compared with the 
college professor, especially if he teach in a 
school where boys and girls are prepared for 
college. He must lead all his pupils m one 
definite direction, toward the strait gate; 
both they and he are to pass through a test 
that he has never made, concerning the value 
of which he may have a low opinion, but 
from which there is no escape. He must 
hurry his flock along, even as a professional 
guide hustles a Cook's tourist party through 
the Louvre. There is no time to linger over 
masterpieces, to indulge in independent 
speculation, or to allow any individual mem- 
ber to take up the precious minutes with 
questions that penetrate beyond the pre- 

67 



68 Teaching in School and College 

scribed limits. The teacher must inspire 
his pupils, yes ; but he must above all inspire 
them in a way that produces immediate, 
practical, and minute results. In some 
schools the independent teacher has a poor 
chance to show his independence, for he is 
reduced to the level of a professional coach. 
The success of his students and his own 
success as a teacher are gauged by the pro- 
portion of his patients that survive the 
operation of the examiner's knife. This ex- 
amination looms up forever, like a terrible 
fate drawing daily nearer, and there are 
some teachers who are more afraid of it than 
their pupils. They must often emphasise 
things that appear to them trivial, and slight 
matters that appear to them primary. The 
college professor, on the other hand, is com- 
paratively free, is the king of his classroom, 
and can indulge himself and his subjects in 
all sorts of intellectual luxuries. This free- 
dom has its insidious temptations along with 
its wonderful privileges. 

There is no doubt in my mind that the two 



Efficiency of College Teaching 69 

most efficient institutions of education in 
the United States are the Military Academy 
at West Point and the Naval Academy at 
Annapolis. In the first place, they have 
the prestige of an exclusive club with a long 
waiting list. It is a signal honour to get in 
at all. In view of the astonishing results 
achieved by this method, I sometimes won- 
der why there are not more colleges in Amer- 
ica, which, instead of trying with all their 
might to attract as many students a^ pos~ 
sible, do not make a fixed limit of member- 
ship, the excellent custom in vogue at so 
many high-grade private schools. Even the 
small colleges insist on the enormous advan- 
tages of the small college, in the apparent 
endeavour to secure as many students as 
possible to enjoy these advantages ; if their 
advertising were successful, they would, as 
Professor Briggs has pointed out, imme- 
diately cease to be small colleges. 

I have visited the classrooms at both 
West Point and Annapolis, spent some time 
in observation, and more in subsequent 



JO Teaching in School and College 

reflection. The students are divided into sec- 
tions of from seven to ten men ; each youth 
knows that he will be called upon to recite 
every day. Impossible to loaf, shirk, dodge, 
or bluff. The test is no distant thing like the 
day of judgment, or a certain thing with an 
uncertain date, like death : it is something 
that has to be faced rather often in each day. 
Tests that are remote lose all their spurring 
power. For although every reader of this 
book knows that he must die, that thought 
does not trouble him so much as a dentist 
appointment or an unpaid bill. Every 
recitation is marked, all the marks are pub- 
lished every week, no favours are granted, 
no excuses accepted, the system is one of 
ruthless competition ; a lazy or indifferent 
student cannot live in that atmosphere. 
Out he goes, and the ranks close up. The 
teachers know exactly the quality of the 
work done by each student; and some 
officer knows exactly where each student is 
from the moment he rises in the morning 
till he retires at night, for the poor devil has 



Efficiency of College Teaching 71 

to post it in his room. The men are happier 
under this strict regime than might be im- 
agined, than even they imagine at the time. 
I asked an officer what he thought of it. 
He said, "Why, when we were cadets, we 

thought the place was a d d workhouse, 

but we all look back to it with the happiest 
recollection." The results are wonderful. 
Every graduate of West Point or Annapolis 
is an educated man. 

The boys are thoroughly human uncJer the 
uniform. I had the honour of giving a 
course of lectures to about two hundred 
cadets in the old chapel at West Point — 
a thing that has a humour all its own, for no 
Quaker who ever lived, even the most uncom- 
promising, has hated war more than I do. 
Talk about not arbitrating questions of 
national honour ! To me the most dis- 
honourable thing that any nation can do is 
to engage in war with another. Well, I 
was lecturing in that beautiful spot one beau- 
tiful day in May. The cadets filed in rigidly, 
each took his place, took out his note-book 



72 Teaching in School and College 

arid pencil, and gave me the air of military 
attention. I stood on the platform, and 
I was the only man in the room who could 
look outside on the green grass, through the 
great open double doors at the rear of the 
hall. In the middle of the lecture, two huge 
setter dogs entered at that portal, and I 
instinctively felt that they would approach 
the only human face they could see. They 
lost no time about it, either, but joyously 
loped down the centre aisle, and mounted 
the high platform, one on one side of me, 
one on the other. I looked at the cadets; 
they were young, and under some strain. 
But not a man moved, not a man smiled. 
They sat up, if possible, more rigidly and 
stiffly than ever, for there were officers in the 
room. Something had to be done imme- 
diately to save the situation, and Providence 
whispered into my ears the right thing to 
say. "Why, these are Setters and I ex- 
pected to meet only West-Pointers ! " Then 
we all had a joyous spontaneous laugh to- 
gether, officers, cadets, and lecturer. 



Efficiency of College Teaching 73 

A year or two ago, on an intensely hot 
evening in June, I went into a hotel 
in New York for dinner. It was so hot that 
I secured a small table facing an open win- 
dow, and ate in peace with my back to the 
room. After a time, four young gentlemen 
came up to me, and introduced themselves. 
I supposed they must be recent Yale grad- 
uates, though for the life of me, I could not 
recall their faces. They said, "We are 
cadets at West Point, on a day's furk)ugh. 
We saw you come into the room, and we did 
not want to pass out without speaking to 
you." This may seem a trivial fact to re- 
cord, but it does not seem so to me. I have 
a glow at the heart now when I think of it. 
One of the pleasantest things about college 
teaching is the man-and-man friendship 
that the teacher forms with his students, 
and this instance was especially delightful, 
for it proved to me that I had not at West 
Point lectured to a collection of uniforms, but 
had spoken to human hearts. 

Although it is impossible to have at 



74 Teaching in School and College 

college the discipline that prevails at West 
Point and Annapolis, I am a believer in 
strict college discipHne, in the absolute en- 
forcement of regularity of attendance, in 
daily lessons, daily tasks, regular marking, 
and semiannual examinations. The Ameri- 
can college youth is tractable, amenable to 
discipline, and willing to do anything rea- 
sonable that is exacted of him by a teacher 
whom he respects. The one thing he cannot 
forgive in a professor is slyness, unfairness, 
anything not absolutely straight. It is, 
therefore, of the utmost importance that the 
students should understand clearly what is 
expected of them, and that each individual 
pupil should feel that when he begins a new 
course, he has exactly the same chance as 
every other individual in it. No past record 
in any other course or in any previous year 
should count for or against. 

How important it is that the teacher 
should control himself, and be a man worthy 
of the respect of his students ! We teachers 
are human, we make many mistakes, and 



Efficiency of College Teaching "j^ 

are all of us far from the ideal. But how 
unfortunate it is for the man behind the desk 
to be shallow or spectacular ; to be peevish 
or constantly irritable ; to fly into bursts of 
anger ; to be childish and picayune ; to be. 
inordinately vain ; to be fatuously jocose ; 
to be deadly dull. 

Whether it is owing to the growth of col- 
lege athletics, and I suspect that has much 
to do with it, or owing to the general advance 
in civilisation and good manners, certain it 
is that college discipline to-day is a far easier 
matter for the president, the dean, and 
the professors than it used to be. Consider 
the "personal contact" between the presi- 
dent and the students. It used to be much 
more close in certain ways than it is now. 
A recognised part of the president's duties 
in the good old times was to preserve order 
by physical force. Brown University is 
situated at the top of a steep hill, and the 
president's house was close to the corner. 
One night the president, the Rev. Dr. 
Ezekiel Robinson, heard a student disturb- 



76 Teaching in School and College 

ance in front of his home. He was tall, 
with a tremendous reach at both the upper 
and lower extremities. He rushed out, and 
when the men saw him coming, they started 
to run. All got away but one luckless indi- 
vidual, who in attempting to round the cor- 
ner received a terrific kick from the pursuing 
theologian, which highly accelerated his 
progress down the hill. Neither student nor 
president thought there was anything incon- 
gruous in this close personal contact. 

Even when I was an undergraduate, a 
large part of the duty of professors and in- 
structors was to maintain order. Unpopular 
tutors had their windows smashed by hard 
missiles, so that one tutor, on being asked 
what his salary was, replied, *'It is one thou- 
sand dollars, with coal thrown in." I re- 
member one tutor rushing out in his night- 
gown, in the attempt to disperse students 
gathered about a bonfire. And it was not an 
unfamiliar spectacle to see a college instruc- 
tor standing behind an elm tree in the night, 
taking down the names of students in a note- 



Efficiency of College Teaching "jj 

book. All this kind of personal contact has 
vanished ; I should think it incredible it ever 
existed, did I not distinctly remember it. 

But the necessity for discipline remains, 
and the discipline should remain with it. 
Records of attendance on all college reci- 
tations and lectures should be faithfully kept, 
and irregularity immediately punished. It is 
vain to expect that students will attend regu- 
larly without rules and penalties. I suspect 
that not every professor would attend regu- 
larly, if it made no diiference with his college 
standing. What kind of training for life do 
students receive in institutions where they 
are never forced to keep their engagements ? 
Is such negligence fair to their future, or 
just to the parents who have placed them 
in our keeping ? 

I believe in regular assignments of lessons, 
and, in recitations, regular marking. An 
Oxford student attended one of my exer- 
cises in a course in Elizabethan Drama, and 
at the end of the hour he said, "Why do you 
give out a regular lesson ? It seems a bit 



y8 Teaching in School and College 

childish and limited. Why don't you just 
mention the names of a number of valuable 
and stimulating books, and let them read for 
themselves ?" I replied, "Of course I do 
that, too. But every man has a regular task 
assigned — otherwise the majority, even with 
the best of intentions, might not do any 
work at all. Do you work at Oxford r^ 
"Oh, I never do any work in term, there 
is so much going on, you know. But 
I read in vacations." He was a clever and 
ambitious man, but he confessed to me that 
the majority of Oxford students did not 
work either in term or in vacation. What- 
ever may be the custom in England or in 
Germany, our American colleges should not 
neglect the many for the few. 

And I believe in the marking-book, and in 
the daily marking of recitations and of writ- 
ten work. I know that to many professors 
this seems undignified, out of keeping with 
the right relations between students and pro- 
fessors in a great university. I do not share 
this sentiment. A student from an Ameri- 



Efficiency of College Teaching 79 

can institution where the marks are never 
given or heard of except at fixed examina- 
tions visited Yale, and told me it seemed to 
him very schoolboyish for the instructor to 
make a mark in his book after each recita- 
tion. Whether it is schoolboyish or gentle- 
manly, is not the point ; every system should 
be judged by its results. I am convinced 
that the best way to get faithful work out of 
students is to mark them regularly. The 
only real objection to the marking-lpok is 
the impossibility of absolute fairness. It is 
a rough and exceedingly crude method of 
appraisal, but, unfortunately, the best I 
know. 

And I believe in written examinations. 
Imperfect as they are, they are a distinct 
test of knowledge. We hear a great deal 
about the nervous terror of pupils at a writ- 
ten examination, the impossibility of their 
writing what they know, and many com- 
plaints of a like nature. But, as a rule, when 
a student has done well in a subject, he is not 
afraid of the test. Those who are naturally 



8o Teaching in School and College 

stupid, or have neglected their work, are, of 
course, afraid of the examination, as they 
ought to be. The test is then important, 
for an examination is meant to reveal igno- 
rance as well as knowledge. I was always in 
terror of mathematical examinations, owing 
to my stupidity in the subject ; but I rather 
enjoyed those in studies where I excelled. 
I think that all colleges should require en- 
trance examinations, and regular term exam- 
inations during the course. 

I believe that the marks students receive 
on examinations and on the completion of a 
course should be made known to them. 
Some teachers seem to be mortally afraid 
that students will study for marks, but my 
fear is that not enough of them will. If 
an intelligent student exalts his mark above 
real knowledge of the subject, this is unfor- 
tunate. But to excel in college scholarship 
is surely an honourable ambition, and one 
that needs stimulation. If a student feels 
pride in high standing, I am personally very 
much pleased. It Is the most natural thing 



Efficiency of College Teaching 8i 

in the world, when a student has written an 
examination paper, and handed it in, that he 
should obtain a definite result. There should 
be no air of mystery about it. Every man 
who fires a shot at a target wants to know 
whether he has hit it or not. No teacher 
should be bothered by continual requests for 
marks, but that is a matter of detail, which 
any sensible person can settle satisfactorily. 
An examination should not be a cleverly 
prepared trap to catch the students : bn the 
other hand it must not be too obvious. The 
difficulty of preparing a fair examination 
paper in a large college is enormously in- 
creased by the number of diabolically clever 
private tutors and coaches, undergraduate 
and professional "lectures," digests, and 
other first aids to the injured. These make 
it even more necessary to mark daily work, 
and to force the average student to believe 
that no final spurt of energy can take the 
place of systematic daily effort. There are 
some tutors so clever I believe they could put 
a dog through an examination — for some 



82 Teaching in School and College 

of their successful patients seem to have less 
than canine intelligence. The examination 
by itself is not an ideal test. The teacher 
should do everything he can to frown upon 
digests, special lectures, and all short cuts 
to knowledge, as being inconsistent with 
true scholarship. ^ 

Teachers should mark strictly and fairly, 
but a "low marker" is not necessarily the 
sign either of a strict disciplinarian or a good 
teacher. Some teachers seem to think the 
main aim should be to flunk as many stu- 
dents as possible, and many young teachers 
are really proud of a long list of failures, 
thinking that it shows a commendable stand- 
ard. As a matter of fact, if a teacher 
taught a subject a half year, and then over 
fifty per cent of his pupils failed to pass the 
examination, it would seem as though he 
were rather unimpressive, rather inefficient. 
A teacher should not be afraid to mark some 
papers very high, and others very low. 
Those who give the whole class an aver- 
age mark break the hearts of ambitious 



Efficiency of College Teaching 83 

students, and encourage the lazy in their 
sins. 

A mark once given should stay, should 
never be changed or cancelled. If the 
students know that in advance, they will 
never ask for remittance. It is very painful 
to tell a college senior that he has failed in 
your course, and cannot have his degree at 
Commencement. Do not do this until you 
know that he does not deserve to pass, and 
then stand firm. It is greatly to the credit 
of the young gentlemen that I have taught, 
that unspeakably bitter as this disappoint- 
ment is to them and to their families, I have 
never lost a friend by it. 

I think that wherever it is in any way 
possible professors should themselves read 
and grade all the examination papers that 
their students write in their courses, and all 
the written work that they hand in. I know 
that many professors regard this as a waste 
of valuable time and energy, and hand the 
job over to assistants. But the students 
take more interest in a course, and feel more 



84 Teaching in School and College 

confident of the accuracy of the results, 
when the professor who hears their recita- 
tions or who lectures to them reads and 
marks their work himself. Some students 
regard the whole thing as blind chance when 
their papers are marked by a young assis- 
tant who never is seen. "What did you 
draw on that exam .f"' I often hear one 
student ask another, as though it were a 
game of poker. When I was a graduate 
student at Harvard, I studied Shakespeare 
under Professor Child, the foremost Eng- 
lish scholar that America has produced. If 
ever a man's time was important for study 
and research and publication, his was. But 
although there were one hundred and twenty 
students in this course, I was impressed by 
the fact that he read and marked each exam- 
ination paper himself, nay, each question 
on the examination. When I got my book 
back, I read it with great interest. 

I do not believe that a professor can read 
through a long examination in History or 
Literature, and give a general estimate of 



Efficiency of College Teaching 85 

it that will be correct. It is different, of 
course, in Mathematics, where a glance at 
each question may be sufficient. A pro- 
fessor of Mathematics told me that he never 
thought he was reading with sufficient speed, 
unless he could always keep one paper in the 
air. That method will not do in Literature. 
My own scheme, after trying others, is this. 
The perfect mark at Yale is 400. I put eight 
questions on the paper, and the students 
know that each question will couj;it fifty 
points. If there are ten subdivisions of a 
question, each tentacle counts five points ; if 
there are five, each counts ten. Then I 
hire an assistant to do the mathematics. I 
read each answer, speaking out the mark as 
I read. The assistant adds as I progress, 
and the moment the paper is read through 
I know the exact mark for the total, thus 
saving half the time and energy it would take 
if I did the mathematics myself, and, in my 
case, ensuring greater accuracy. The books 
are all returned to the students, with each 
question marked in my own hand. If a 



86 Teaching in School and College 

teacher reads a paper right through and then 
makes a general estimate, he may not have 
observed that there was one question not 
answered at all ; or he may be unduly preju- 
diced by very stupid or very brilliant answers 
to one or two queries. Now I do not think 
there is a teacher who hates to read papers 
more than I do. I have many students, and 
the semiannual task is a terrible burden. I 
loathe it with an unspeakable loathing; it 
is the only part of my work that I abso- 
lutely detest. And yet I believe it to be 
vitally important and richly productive. 
Occasionally, too, there are delightful oases 
in the desert. On an examination paper 
that I set in Browning, a subdivision of a 
question concerned the biography of the 
poet. A student wrote : "Browning died 
in 1889. In that same year I was born. 
What a shameful exchange !" 

Wherever public opinion will permit it, I 
believe in the so-called honour system in 
examinations. There is much less cheating 
in college work now than there used to be, 



Efficiency of College Teaching 87 

partly owing to the general and unquestion- 
able moral advance in student life, partly 
owing to the more dignified and at the same 
time more intimate relation between teacher 
and taught. Every student is a natural- 
born casuist, as, perhaps, we all are where our 
personal interests are concerned, and one 
must accept that fact ; but if the class and 
the professor understand each other, I am 
sure that the honour system is the most satis- 
factory. Fortunately or unfortunately the 
average student cares more for the good opin- 
ion of his classmates than he does for that of 
the faculty, and strong public sentiment 
exerts a mighty pressure. I have used 
the honour system with my students for a 
number of years, and with excellent results. 
Immediately the sceptic asks, "How do you 
know .f"' The answer is really very simple. 
There is a check on the honour system, 
as there should be on all systems. I 
should have little respect for a student 
who told me the name of another whom he 
saw cheating ; we want no spies and no tell- 



88 Teaching in School and College 

tales in our classes. But I always tell my 
students in advance that unless the honour 
system prevents cheating, it is worthless, 
and that if by chance any man should ob- 
serve evil-doing, it is his duty to tell me, 
without giving any names, that there are 
those who take advantage of their oppor- 
tunities. This seems to me a simple and 
effective check. 

It is exceedingly unfortunate that stu- 
dents who will not lie to each other or steal 
from one another should think it trivial to 
lie to the faculty or to steal a good mark 
from the faculty, which they have not earned. 
Cases of this undoubtedly occur every year 
in every college, in connection with the hand- 
ing in of written work. And there are indi- 
gent students, whose tuition is remitted 
because they are poor and struggling 
for an education, who partially support 
themselves by writing compositions for 
wealthy classmates, thus exhibiting ingrat- 
itude, disloyalty, and treachery toward the 
institution. In all these matters there is 



Efficiency of College Teaching 89 

decided Improvement as compared with the 
good old times, but flagrant cases occasion- 
ally jar the optimism of the teacher. A 
man whose classmates would ostracise him 
if he cheated to win a prize, will lose no pop- 
ularity or standing by cheating to save him- 
self from failure — which means, of course, 
that the lad has no real standard of virtue 
at all, his virtue being dependent simply on 
the size of the temptation. The true stand- 
ard of virtue should always be Within a 
man's heart, never determined by external 
circumstances. In order really to know 
whether a man is virtuous, good-natured, or 
gentlemanly, we must see him tested. One 
who scornfully rejects a little bribe, but 
accepts a big one, is surely not virtuous ; 
one whose good-nature turns sour in adver- 
sity is not really good-natured ; a man 
whose politeness does not survive a dis- 
appointment is not a true gentleman. 

In general, and except in special emer- 
gencies, it is best for the teacher both in 
school and college to take a boy's word of 



90 Teaching in School and College 

honour, even if the circumstances seem sus- 
picious. It is better to let three or four 
students He to you than to punish an inno- 
cent pupil with denial of his word, or with 
suspicion of his honesty. Nothing rankles 
in a young man's heart more venomously 
than unjust suspicion or unfair treatment 
from his teacher. I well remember the 
crafty and sceptical expression on the faces of 
some of my teachers when I was telling them 
only the exact truth. I wish in vain that I 
could forget these experiences. When I was 
a freshman I had an attack of chills and 
fever, with a high temperature ; it was 
simply out of the question for me to attend 
college classes : I had to go to bed. Yet in 
two days I was well, and reported to my 
college professor that I had been ill, and 
hoped that my absence would be excused. 
He looked at me with a sceptical smile, and I 
saw he did not believe me. I had to take the 
penalty, and went away with a dull rage in 
my heart. On another occasion, a wife of one 
of the professors had wandered off, out of 



Efficiency of College Teaching 91 

her mind, and volunteer students went in 
search of her. I became lost in the woods, 
and was drenched to the skin by the winter 
rain. I did not reach my room until ten 
in the evening, and was too exhausted to 
study. The next morning I told my instruc- 
tor the facts, not expecting that he would 
believe me. To my surprise and delight 
he accepted my story instantly, and said 
kindly, "You must have been very tired." 
Do you think I shall ever forget thit man ^ 
It is curious to find that a student who is 
perhaps almost overpunctilious in every- 
thing else will sometimes cheat in written 
work. I remember one extraordinary case. 
I was playing a golf match at the Country 
Club with an undergraduate : it was a 
match we were each of us keen to win, for 
it was the final for the club championship. 
On one of the holes we played long shots out 
of the fair green ; his ball went into the 
bunker, mine flew over. When I reached 
the bunker, I passed on ahead, and in a 
moment or two, he came up, and said he 



92 Teaching in School and College 

had lost the hole. *' Impossible, we haven't 
reached the green," said I. But he ex- 
plained that as he entered the bunker, one 
of his clubs accidentally fell out of the bag 
and into the sand, and although he had not 
even tried to address the ball, and although 
there was no possibility of my having seen 
what had occurred, he declared that he had 
lost the hole. A short time after this event, 
the same young gentleman submitted, in 
one of his college courses, a theme written 
by another hand. He was caught, and sus- 
pended from college six months. 

Professors should not only insist on regu- 
lar work from the student, they should in- 
sist that it appear on the date previously 
announced. I visited a large American 
university and entered the classroom of a 
famous lecturer. There were about seventy 
students present. The lecturer announced : 
"Your theses are all due to-day. Please 
bring them to the desk." There was a 
moment's painful silence, and then one 
undergraduate walked forward and de- 



Efficiency of College Teaching 93 

posited his essay, amid general laughter, in 
which the professor joined. "One swallow 
does not make a summer," he remarked 
pessimistically. I do not care how distin- 
guished an authority he was, in this instance 
he proved himself to be a slovenly teacher. 
Students will not rebel when fairly notified 
in advance, but they will always take advan- 
tage of a teacher who does not mean what 
he says. In the training of college under- 
graduates, it is just as important to^empha- 
sise punctuality in work as it is quality. 
They are more tractable in this respect than 
any other class of persons. They will 
adhere even to minute regulations, if the 
regulations are clearly and definitely ex- 
plained to them in advance, with the rea- 
sons why the regulations are made. A 
teacher who accepts "late themes" prepares 
himself for all sorts of vexatious difiiculties, 
and neglects an important part of necessary 
discipline. 



VI 

EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION 

A GOOD teacher must first of all know his 
subject : that is axiomatic. I might 
study the art of teaching all my life and yet 
I should never be able to teach Mathematics 
or any other science. But besides knowing the 
subject, the teacher must understand some- 
thing about human nature, must know his 
pupils. A teacher teaches some one as well 
as some thing. This is, of course, the reason 
why head-masters of schools secure athletes 
and popular society men to teach their boys : 
these may not be authorities in any special 
field of learning, they may not fully under- 
stand the subject, but they always under- 
stand the object. A man who has a doctor's 
degree may or may not be a good teacher — 
that remains to be proved. A theologian or 
Hebrew scholar maybe a miserable preacher. 

94 



Education and Instruction 95 

How often I have seen a learned doctor of 
divinity alienating his audience with long- 
winded dulness, whilst utterly unaware 
of the fact ! There should always be vital 
communication between the preacher and 
the listener, between the teacher and the 
taught. 

The real test of a teacher is not his success 
with pupils who are clever and eager to 
learn, though he should always command the 
sincere respect of these chosen few. His 
test comes with the indifferent majority, 
with those who don't care, with those who 
don't want to learn. It is a delight to a 
teacher to have pupils of natural capacity 
and intellectual background, who respond 
instantly to his best thought ; but it is a still 
greater delight to see the first signs of intelli- 
gence in a dull block of clay, to see attention 
replace indifference, and witness the birth 
of intellectual curiosity. It may mean 
salvation. 

The average group of students do not troop 
into the class room eager to learn, their 



96 Teaching in School and College 

minds full of the subject. They are think- 
ing of a hundred other things — of what they 
did yesterday, of a letter they have just read, 
of the sporting news in the morning paper, 
of a pleasant engagement immediately after 
class, of a tennis match for which they are 
already clad. There is no open macada- 
mised road between the teacher's mind and 
theirs : there are enormous obstacles, which 
must be immediately cleared, before any- 
thing can be accomplished at all. 

The interest of the class must be instantly 
aroused and maintained until the end of the 
period. This is the first step, the first all- 
important problem. The teacher must 
drive out of their minds all other things 
and substitute an absorbing, jealous interest 
in the lesson. It is not easy to teach on the 
day before or day after a holiday, on the morn- 
ing following a presidential election, on the 
eve or afterglow of a great foot-ball game. 
But it can be done, and without the slight- 
est allusion to the events that fill the stu- 
dents' minds as they enter the room. A 



Education and Instruction 97 

teacher is an advocate. He is like a lawyer 
before the jury — if he does not interest his 
audience, he has lost his case. Minute and 
exact accuracy must sometimes be sacrificed 
for emphasis. By the time the fact lodges 
in the pupil's skull, it will not be unduly 
disproportionate. A teacher who teaches 
with constant parentheses, qualifications, 
and trivial explanations will never make any 
definite impression. As Professor Louns- 
bury has said, "The capacity of theJiuman 
mind to resist the introduction of knowledge 
cannot be overestimated." 

There is something distinctly histrionic 
about the teacher's art, which is one reason 
why it is so exciting to those who love it. 
Every recitation should be an event. Many 
people think a teacher's life must be monot- 
onous, made up of dull routine, because 
he teaches the same subject and the same 
lessons over and over again. Nothing could 
be farther from the truth. I know of no 
profession more exciting, more stirring, more 
thrilling than teaching. No one believes 



98 Teaching in School and College 

that an actor who acts Hamlet finds it 
monotonous, although he repeats not only 
the same words, but the same gestures, the 
same attitudes, the same intonations. There 
is no monotony in teaching the same lesson 
to different pupils, not if the teacher is a good 
actor. In my first year at Yale, I taught 
short lessons in King Henry IF, Part /, to 
twelve different divisions : it was just as 
interesting the twelfth time as the first. 
In fact, the first time was a kind of dress 
rehearsal, and I think I did better the longer 
I kept at it. 

The main object of a recitation, with ques- 
tion, answer, and discussion, should be to 
educate : the chief object of a lecture must 
be instruction. In undergraduate work, ed- 
ucation is more important than instruction, 
a,nd therefore I believe that more lasting 
good is accomplished by recitations — the 
give and take — than by lectures. The 
ideal recitation is, of course, with a rather 
small class, — not too small to take away the 
spur of competition and the excitement of 



Education and Instruction 99 

numbers, — but small enough for each man 
in the room to feel the teacher's personality 
and to know that there is a chance for him 
to display knowledge and ignorance. For 
this reason, it is always best, even though 
it involves enormous expense and the multi- 
plication of teachers, to divide large classes 
into small divisions ; to have the same les- 
sons taught by several teachers, and to have 
the same teacher teach the same lesson 
several times. It pays. The ide^l object 
of the instructor is to educate every student 

I in the room, to "educe the man," as Brown- 
ing says. 

; Yet recitations should always teach, 

should always give some instruction. Every 
student should actually know more about 
the subject at the end of the hour than he 
did at the beginning. The teacher must 
not be a mere hearer of recitations. He 
should not exclusively confine himself to 
discovering whether or not the pupils have 
made sufficient preparation. In many of 
our recitations at school and college we 



loo Teaching in School and College 

never expected to learn anything; never 
did, anyhow : we simply answered formal 
questions. So fixed was this idea in our 
minds, that our first interview with a new 
instructor in the Hartford High School, Mr. 
Winfred R. Martin, one of the greatest 
teachers I ever knew, was not only disastrous 
to us, but we nearly broke out into open 
rebellion. He asked us things that were 
not in the notes ! Later we found him a 
constant and powerful inspiration. Even 
at that early age we obtained from him a 
notion of the meaning of true scholarship. 
He was and is a profound and original 
scholar, a man of varied and amazing 
learning, and we respected him for it. 

But in many of our classes the conven- 
tional method of the so-called teacher re- 
acted unfavourably on us. Suppose the 
lesson was in Latin. When one student 
was reciting, all the others who had not yet 
been called up were reading ahead, thinking 
it might be their turn next. As soon as a 
man recited, he retired into his own thoughts, 



Education and Instruction loi 

paid no further attention to the subject, 
slept, or read a novel. We had teachers 
whose sole method, invariable as fate, was 
as follows : "Jones : scan ; that will do. 
Brown : translate ; that will do. Smith : 
why is this verb in the subjunctive ? That 
will do." Some others, instead of saying 
"That will do," said "Sufficient." I remem- 
ber that independent teachers with a differ- 
ent understanding of their duty, had a hard 
time with the lethargy and inertness of the 
class under that general regime. Professor 
Edward S. Dana called on one of my class- 
mates in Physics : the student rose, looked 
fixedly at him a moment, and sat down, 
knowing he had obtained a zero, but feeling 
that fate had done its worst, and that he 
need fear no fresh misfortune during the 
hour. He therefore looked resignedly out 
of the window. Professor Dana cried, "But 
don't dismiss the subject from your mind !" 
We had one teacher to whom we recited 
three hours a week during an entire year. 
He never changed the intonation of his 



I02 Teaching in School and College 

voice, never made a comment or an inde- 
pendent remark until the last day, and never 
once lifted his eyes from the book on the 
desk. I can remember now a classmate 
secretly looking at his watch, and, finding 
that the hour was almost gone, his face lit 
up with rapture. 

Some purely mechanical questions must 
be asked, in order to test knowledge and 
preparation : pupils must be held definitely 
to their work. But other questions must 
be stimulating. Information, opinions, and 
ideas should be brought out by the Socratic 
method, and arguments pushed to a conclu- 
sion. It is well to cultivate as much intel- 
lectual resistance as possible. The teacher 
should be delighted when his judgment or 
interpretation or statement is seriously 
questioned by a pupil. It is a sign of life. 
I have had students who have passionately 
resisted my comments on certain lessons. 
Nothing could possibly please me more. I 
hate to see them swallow everything I say. 
The passionate partisanship of youth, which 



Education and Instruction 103 

shows itself in so many other things, should 
appear in studies. I asked a student in a 
class in Tennyson whether he preferred the 
later poems like Rizpah and The First 
Quarrel, or the earlier ones, like The Lady of 
Shalott and The Lotos Eaters. He hesitated, 
trying to think up something to say. I was 
grieved that he hesitated, and told the class 
that, at their time of life, it would be natural 
to have a strenuous, positive, even passion- 
ate opinion, either one way or the oliier. I 
should not have minded if his hesitation 
had been the hesitation accompanying or 
preceding valuable thought ; but it was plain 
that he did not know which he preferred, 
and did not care. 

Voluntary recitations are a good thing, 
and should be received by the teacher with 
respectful attention. It is hard to get 
sophisticated students in big Eastern col- 
leges to volunteer remarks, comments, and 
questions in the classroom. There is a 
natural healthy modesty, there is a fear of 
hypocrisy, there is a reluctance to make a 



I04 Teaching in School and College 

public display of knowledge, reading, or 
love of literature. How many times when a 
student has earnestly volunteered an inde- 
pendent suggestion have I seen a smile 
on the faces of the other men ! The en- 
vironment is not favourable, and students 
often have a modest shame of what is 
best in them. Still, this situation can be 
overcome by the exercise of a little tact. 
Then, too, another difficulty appears. There 
is sure to be one, perhaps two eccentric and 
zealous students who want to talk all the 
time, and ask questions every other moment 
— sometimes at very embarrassing moments. 
When I was a freshman, one of my class- 
mates constantly tried to give the teacher 
information : finally, every time he opened 
his mouth, other students took out pencils 
and recorded his sayings with mock gravity. 
I had one college pupil, a fine scholar, who 
insisted on talking so voluminously and so 
continuously that a secret petition was cir- 
culated in the class, signed, and sent to me, 
requesting me to shut him up. But better 



Education and Instruction 105 

all these difficulties than indifference and 
inertia. 

And this volunteer work must be wisely 
directed and made progressively efficient. 
There are some courses where the students, 
knowing the weaknesses of the professor, 
will simulate a profound interest in certain 
topics, and ask him questions with the sole 
object of consuming the time, so as to 
escape being called on themselves. There 
are many amusing instances that% have 
come to my notice. Pompousness on the 
part of the professor will sometimes bring 
about a curious situation. One egotistical in- 
structor, who had talked for nearly an hour, 
then took out a watch, consulted it solemnly, 
and said : "There are just five minutes left. 
Is there anyone who would like to ask a ques- 
tion ?" One student raised his hand, and 
asked, "What time is it ?" 

The teacher must work with the class, as 
well as manage it. He should be not 
only a master, but a comrade. I have seen 
cases where the teacher on one side and the 



io6 Teaching in School and College 

students on the other were like two Yan- 
kees driving a bargain. The teacher was 
trying to get all the work possible out of the 
class, and give them the least possible credit 
for it : the pupils were trying to get the 
highest possible mark, with the least possible 
exertion, and felt terribly "sold" if they had 
read a line beyond the confines of the lesson. 
Indeed, I heard of one student who received 
his marks at home in the presence of his 
father: "Hey!" he cried exultantly. "I 
got 200 in old X's course. Am I the real 
thing, or not.^*" His father said, "But I 
thought 200 was just the passing mark." 
" So it is, father ; that's why it's such a darn 
good mark." He had not wasted an ounce 
of superfluous eflPort. 

In courses where recitations are imprac- 
ticable the system of instruction must be 
by lectures. The older I grow, the more 
sceptical I am of the value of this method 
in undergraduate work. How many people 
there are who the day after a lecture re- 
member only that the lecturer was dull, or 



Education and Instruction 107 

delightful, and in neither case remember any- 
thing he said ! Courses of lectures to col- 
lege classes by men who understand the fine 
art of public speaking, have made a careful 
study of presentation, and know exactly 
how to adapt themselves to various audi- 
ences, may accomplish a great deal ; but 
in general, recitations are more effective. 
Instruction by lectures should invariably be 
accompanied by tests, checks, and various 
devices to ensure not only attenti(wi, but 
regular work on the part of the student. 
This may be accomplished by having the 
big class divided into weekly divisions with 
quiz-masters ; or the first ten minutes of 
the hour may be devoted to a written test 
on the subject-matter ; or every student may 
be compelled to hand in a written theme on 
the lesson before the lecture begins. If this 
be done, it is essential that the theme be, in 
every case, submitted before the lecture, so 
that the student will have to write his sum- 
mary or his opinion on what he has studied, 
not on what he has caught from the speaker. 



io8 Teaching in School and College 

The lecture itself should not merely in- 
struct, it should inspire. The students 
should be stimulated rather than stuffed. 
The genius is a law unto himself; but for 
the average professor, it is best that the 
lecture should be neither written nor extem- 
porised, but spoken from notes, each main 
point being emphasised and driven home as 
energetically and clearly as possible. I 
was talking once with Mr. Paul Armstrong, 
the American dramatist. We were dis- 
cussing the necessity of exaggeration on the 
stage. He said, "The audience has just 
one accessible spot, a bare space only an 
inch wide, between the hair and the eye- 
brows : the playwright must hit this mark 
with a wedge." If the lecture be all writ- 
ten in fluent and elegant English, the hour 
passes agreeably and ineffectively, both 
teacher and pupil have a pleasant time, and 
only the ablest students obtain any definite 
or lasting result. There are no salient, pro- 
tuberant facts and ideas that stick. On the 
other hand, if the lecturer speak without any 



Education and Instruction 109 

notes, the lecture is apt to wander, lose 
coherence and logical order : and most 
extempore speakers have the distressing 
habit of beginning nearly every sentence 
with the word "now," which is wearing on 
the nerves. But if a few points are tre- 
mendously emphasised, repeated, and a pause 
is made to give the students a chance to 
make an accurate record in the note-book, 
then these leading ideas can be enlarged, 
illustrated, and made clear and intere^ing by 
free talk. 

On the final written examinations which 
must always come at the end of lecture 
courses, care must be taken to have the 
questions deal fully as much with the les- 
sons studied as with the lectures. The 
teacher must insist that the pupil shall not 
merely repeat the phrases delivered by the 
lecturer ; for I have known instances where 
the lecturer had a whole series of pet phrases, 
which the students echoed back to him on 
the examination book. The students should, 
indeed, be encouraged to state independent 



no Teaching in School and College 

views and opinions on the examination; 
only, in order that this may not lead to 
errors and vagaries, it is well to inform the 
students that if they hold views divergent 
from the lecturer, they should state the 
professor's view first, and then their dis- 
senting opinion, with reasons. Intelligent 
opposition of this kind brings joy to a 
teacher's heart, and should be practically 
rewarded with high credit. 

In all my remarks on school and college 
teaching, I have purposely confined myself 
to the ordinary school and the ordinary 
college, whether large or small. What I 
have said and shall say is not intended to 
deal, except indirectly, with professional 
schools, graduate courses, technical scien- 
tific work, and manual training schools. I 
do not understand the practical problems 
in teaching scientific and mechanical work, 
being an ignoramus in science, and devoid 
of all mechanical skill. I have never been 
"a handy man about the house," and if a 
clock, bicycle, or window-sash is out of 



Education and Instruction 1 1 1 

order, I immediately consult a specialist. 
And although I have studied in graduate 
schools, and taught graduate students for 
many years, this is not the place to discuss 
the kind of teaching necessary for such work. 
In undergraduate college teaching, should 
the scholar or the teacher predominate ^ 
A university must have both kinds of men : 
the original investigator, who brings glory 
to the institution by his published work, 
inspires the respect and admiration of 
pupils by his reputation, and also the man 
who knows how to teach, and can handle 
classes with high efficiency. Best of all is 
it when the same man combines both 
functions. A professor must be a scholar 
in order to teach. If a teacher is nothing 
but a pleasant fellow, an agreeable personal- 
ity, with no ammunition except a cultivated 
mind, he cannot make a forceful or a lasting 
impression. As Professor Cook has said, 
the students may leave his courses "satisfied 
with the course, satisfied with their teacher, 
and most of all, satisfied with themselves." 



112 Teaching in School and College 

They will know nothing of the high ideal of 
scholarship or the thorny road that leads 
to it. A teacher cannot have the lasting 
respect of his best pupils, unless he be a 
sound scholar. Above all, he must be a 
growing man. A great danger in teaching, 
even in college, is that after one has an 
assured position, one will be content to 
teach one's classes, prepare the lessons for 
those classes, and spend the rest of the time 
in amusement or in mere desultory reading. 
After some years, the mind gets into a 
condition not only where it has ceased to 
grow, but cannot grow. Then the teaching 
suffers, and the man wonders why he is not 
so effective as he used to be. The brain gets 
into such a state that the siphon sucks : 
there is really nothing there. Every teacher 
should have special lines of work, study, 
research, and production — in his special- 
ity, of course — but preferably apart from 
the actual courses he is teaching. In- 
tellectual growth is not a matter of age, 
it is entirely individual. A teacher should 



Education and Instruction 113 

always be on the watch against intellectual 
stagnation, which breeds decay. No teacher 
should allow himself to be beaten by his 
own Past. 

But, in justice to the students, and to the 
parents who send them to the college and 
pay for their instruction, the majority of 
every faculty should be good teachers. And 
great teachers should be rewarded, advanced, 
promoted. They should be made to feel 
that to excel in teaching is a dignified goal 
for ambition, and that success means pro- 
motion. Every university can afford to 
have some famous original scholars on the 
faculty rolls, even when, as sometimes 
happens, they are miserable teachers ; but 
these men are luxuries, and if they are 
failures as teachers, there should exist not 
the slightest doubt as to their actual position 
as profound scholars in the intellectual 
world outside. No local reputation, how- 
ever great, is sufficient. In many American 
universities to-day, owing to the German 
influence, good teaching not only fails of 



114 Teaching in School and College 

reward, but Is not encouraged, not respected, 
especially by those who can't teach. No 
one respects a great scholar more than I — 
but what would become of the students 
if all the professors were more interested 
in their own investigations than in the 
welfare of their pupils ? What would even- 
tually become of the professors ? I heard 
one college professor say that a college 
would be a splendid place, if only one did not 
have to meet one's classes and go through 
the stupid business of teaching. I suspect 
that the students cordially reciprocated 
his sentiments. One distinguished pro- 
fessor told me that no teacher should ever 
care anything whatever about the opinion 
that his students had of him, and that no 
professor should ever judge another by 
his success with his classes, because students 
were not qualified to judge. The only 
opinion that any professor should entertain 
with respect was the opinion held of him by 
his colleagues in other universities. They 
were the only ones whose good opinion should 



Education and Instruction 1 1 5 

be sought, for they were the only ones 
qualified to judge. 

Such a remark is interesting, and indi- 
cates a different conception of the work of 
a college teacher from that held by me. 
Just as student popularity may in some 
cases be a bad thing for a teacher, so the 
modern fetich of "original research" may 
lead a man into mere vanity. There are 
men who are so delighted when their names 
are mentioned by a German authority 
that one suspects their ambition is keener 
for reputation than it is to add to the sum 
of human knowledge. Pride, conceit, ar- 
rogance, vanity, and intolerance should 
never accompany great scholarship. And 
no matter what direction the development 
of our colleges will take in the future, no 
matter how brilliant the rewards of re- 
search may be, so long as students attend 
colleges, just so long will there be a demand 
and a necessity for able and devoted teachers. 
No change in administration, no change in 
organisation, no change in ideals can make 



1 1 6 Teaching in School and College 

the work of good teaching superfluous, or can 
rob the teacher of what to him is his greatest 
reward — the affection and friendship of 
his students, and the knowledge that he has 
influenced them for good. 



VII 

ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

ON the subject of required English com- 
position, I am a stout, unabashed, and 
thorough sceptic. And although the major- 
ity is still against me, I am in good company. 
Professor Child read and corrected themes 
at Harvard for about forty years : at the 
end of the time, it was his fervent belief 
that not only was the work unprofitable 
to the student, but that in many cases it 
was injurious. That it is always injurious 
to the instructor, when it is intemperately 
indulged, is certain. When I was an in- 
structor at Harvard, I one day met Pro- 
fessor Child in the yard. He stopped a 
moment and asked me what kind of work 
I was doing. I said, "Reading themes." 
He put his hand affectionately on my 
shoulder, and remarked with that wonderful 

117 



1 1 8 Teaching in School and College 

smile of his, in which kindness was mingled 
with the regret of forty years, ''Don't 
spoil your youth." Professor Wendell, 
who inherited the bondage under which his 
predecessor groaned, has never really be- 
lieved in the efficacy of the work. Pro- 
fessor Lounsbury of Yale has given valuable 
and powerful testimony against it.^ Pro- 
fessor Cook and Professor Beers — two 
quite different types of men — are in this 
point in absolute agreement. 

After spending a year in graduate study at 
Harvard, I was appointed by President 
Eliot Instructor in English, an honour of 
which I have always been proud. I ob- 
served a curious fact. Men who had been 
graduated from Harvard, had studied in 
the graduate school, had topped this by 
some years of research in Europe were 
spending nine-tenths of their time doing 
what ? Reading undergraduate required 
themes and correcting in red ink spelling, 
punctuation, and paragraphing. Why such 
* Harper^ s Magazine, November, 191 1. 



English Composition 119 

mighty labour of preparation to perform 
work that could be done exactly as well by 
any young school-teacher ? Some of the 
instructors were permitted to give one hour 
a week of teaching in English Literature, 
others did nothing but read themes. I read 
and marked over seven hundred themes a 
week — most of them were short themes, 
but some were not. Whenever I entered 
my room I was greeted by the huge pile 
of themes on the table, awaiting my^atten- 
tion. I read very few books the whole 
year — there was no time. I never went 
to bed before midnight. If I were sick 
for two or three days, a substitute had to 
be found, for it was only by steady daily 
reading that I could keep pace with the 
manuscripts pouring in like a flood, threaten- 
ing to engulf me every day. I am very 
glad that I had this experience, for a variety 
of reasons : it brought me in relation with 
the Harvard English faculty, where I made 
friendships for life, and I cannot speak too 
highly of the kindness and encouragement 



I20 Teaching in School and College 

shown to the beginner by these men. It 
brought me into remarkably close contact 
with one hundred and twenty Harvard 
seniors and juniors, whose daily themes I 
read. These young gentlemen practically 
kept a diary by this method, and told me 
frankly not only their experiences, but 
their thoughts. I also read freshman and 
sophomore required themes, and had an 
excellent opportunity to become acquainted 
with the mental states of the average 
Harvard undergraduate. And I learned 
what teaching English composition meant. 
But with the highest respect and admira- 
tion for my colleagues, nothing on earth 
would have induced me to continue such 
brain-fagging toil another year. I do not 
know that I should have been invited to 
do so, for I accepted another situation 
without asking. The curious thing is, that 
I then believed in the efficacy of the system. 
I said to myself : "This is worse than coal- 
heaving. This is nerve-destroying, a tor- 
ture to soul and body. But it is necessary. 



English Composition 121 

Someone must do it. Why not I ? But 
not I any longer." 

I entered upon my duties at Yale, and 
taught freshmen English Literature. These 
freshmen had passed no entrance examina- 
tion in English, for Yale had not then 
adopted it. The next year I had the same 
students. I made them all write four or 
five rather long compositions during the 
year, in addition to and in connection with 
their classroom work in literature. *When 
I took home the first batch, I said : ''Now 
for trouble. These young men have never 
had instruction in English composition, 
and have never passed through the valuable 
drill in the freshman year given in other 
colleges." But, to my unspeakable amaze- 
ment, their compositions were just as good 
technically as those written by Harvard 
sophomores ! It was a tremendous sur- 
prise, for the writers were not, as a class, 
one whit more advanced mentally than 
their Harvard brothers. 

Then in junior year, I required, as I do 



122 Teaching in School and College 

now, every student in a large lecture course 
to write a weekly theme. Indeed, for one 
who does not believe in required composi- 
tions, I of my own choice read a large 
number every year. But this is not so 
contradictory as it may seem, which will 
presently appear. I took one weekly batch, 
all of them, the few good, the few bad, and 
the many commonplace, up to Harvard, 
and submitted them to one of the Harvard 
professors who was immersed in the 
"system." He read them carefully, and 
told me they were exactly as good techni- 
cally as those done by Harvard juniors. 

Now unless the results of constant re- 
quired themes are absolutely definite and 
satisfactory, it simply does not pay to 
require them; for the labour and expense 
involved in reading and correcting are pro- 
digious, and grow every year like a cor- 
rupt pension bill. I know of nothing in 
the world that illustrates more beautifully 
the law of diminishing returns than required 
courses in composition. A class of students 



English Composition 123 

will never under any circumstances write 
five times as well by writing five themes as 
they will by writing one ; but the reading 
and correcting of five themes require five 
times the effort on the part of the body of 
teachers. In those schools and colleges 
where the English departments believe in 
constant required compositions, they are 
constantly demanding more instructors, 
more time, and more money. Quite nat- 
urally. I read a very interesting rej^rt on 
the subject by that accomplished pro- 
fessor of English, Sophie Hart, of Welles- 
ley. Here are some extracts : "The 
committee urges an increase in the time 
given to the reading and discussion of 
themes in class. . . . An increase in the re- 
writing of themes is also urged. . . . Stu- 
dents should, as they advance, be taught 
to expect to rewrite from 60 to 75 per cent 
of their themes. . . . The greatest need in 
college instruction In English, as In secon- 
dary schools. Is a larger teaching staff. . . . 
Professor Hart of Cornell strikes at the root 



124 Teaching in School and College 

of our difficulty in his communication to 
the committee: *Our Cornell experience 
is that the most difficult thing to over- 
come is the lack of thought. Many of our 
freshmen seem to believe that anything 
patched up in grammatical shape will pass 
for writing. ... I urge school-teachers to 
train their scholars to think; especially to 
prepare outlines of compositions before 
writing the composition.'" 

Art thou there, truepenny 1 Of course 
that is the real difficulty. They are forced 
to write before they have anything to 
say, and intelligent teachers are forced 
to read and correct this vain and empty 
stuff. If a student is well-read, familiar 
with good literature, and has opinions, his 
writing is usually technically adequate. 
I heard a college president say, "The way to 
learn to write is to write." But it is not 
true. A good physician or surgeon has 
not learned to practise by practising : that 
is the method of quacks. Years of in- 
struction in knowledge and in principles 



English Composition 125 

must come first. I have known cases 
where a boy will write a required composition 
full of grammatical and rhetorical errors ; 
then he will write a letter to his instructor, 
saying he is called home by illness in the 
family, and the letter is technically correct. 

I once saw a hundred students, armed 
only with pencil and paper, shut up in a 
college classroom. The teacher sprung 
some subjects on them — "One Summer's 
Day" among others. No student^ could 
leave till he had finished his composition. 
Imagine the results ! A man I know once 
remarked, **I want to write articles for the 
papers and magazines : the only trouble is, 
I find I have a paucity of words and ideas." 

In the schools there must be some ele- 
mentary instruction in writing : the simple 
principles can be taught, and themes written 
to illustrate spelling, sentence arrangement, 
punctuation, and paragraphing. Composi- 
tions on interesting contemporary subjects, 
or on subjects connected closely with the 
lessons in Literature can from time to time 



126 Teaching in School and College 

be required. A good plan is to have the 
class vote on a list of subjects. 

In college, it is well to have critical 
writing accompany literary courses, es- 
pecially in the last two years. This is 
true particularly of lecture courses in Litera- 
ture, where the students should write, 
not a synopsis nor a description, but an 
honest opinion. And they should be en- 
couraged to write truthfully, absolutely 
regardless of the world's valuation of a 
certain author. Let them say what they 
really think. Each theme should be a 
personal impression, a confession. 

Then, although I absolutely disbelieve 
in the study of formal rhetoric, and also in 
courses in required composition, I believe 
that every college should furnish elective 
courses — as many as possible — for the 
benefit of those students who really wish to 
practise writing as a fine art, who wish to 
improve their literary style. These courses 
should be strictly limited in numbers, so 
that the teacher may have plenty of time 



English Composition 127 

for personal conference outside of the class- 
room with each pupil. This is much more 
valuable than the class meetings. 

I am certain, however, that the best way 
to learn to write is to read, just as one learns 
good manners by associating with well-bred 
people. A student who loves good reading, 
who has a trained critical taste, will almost 
always write well, and is in a position to 
develop his style by practice, the reading 
and ideas having come in the propel order, 
first instead of last. I was teaching a 
large number of Yale seniors and juniors a 
course in American Literature, each pupil 
being required to write a weekly expression 
of opinion on the book just read, and hand it 
in before the lecture. I append a theme 
submitted by a junior who had never re- 
ceived the slightest training in rhetoric or 
English composition. He had even omitted 
the sophomore course in English Literature. 
But he came to college from a home where 
there were good books, and he was passion- 
ately fond of reading. The subject for the 



128 Teaching in School and College 

week was The Scarlet Letter^ and this is what 
he wrote : — 

One thing which struck me in this story was 
the subtle skill with which Hawthorne enwraps 
his characters in the atmosphere of long past 
years. The beginning and end are like glimpses 
down a long, dim vista ; and on all his pages 
there is the dust and mould of time. It is most 
truly dramatic; but its dramatic power lies 
rather in its profound understanding of human- 
ity than in its fervour of delineation. It is, 
compared with the tragedies of Shakespeare, 
like the glassy reflection of a far-off conflagra- 
tion compared with that conflagration itself. 
His people are most true interpretations of human 
feeling; yet they always partake of a vague, 
incorporeal character, like beings seen in far-off 
perspective. Their conversation, too, has a 
certain old-time quaintness, which never strikes 
us as untrue to life, yet does not seem just 
like ordinary conversation ; just as a human 
voice may sound human and yet strange when 
coming from a far distance. I think this is 
really one of the greatest charms of the book. 
In that gulf of generations all their grosser 



English Composition 129 

personalities are lost; and we are able to con- 
fine our attention to the workings of the soul. 
This misty atmosphere also lends peculiar 
sweetness and force to Hawthorne's moral. 
It makes it seem, not like the dogmatic asser- 
tion of an aggressive moralist, but like the voice 
of impersonal experience, speaking out of the 
dusky caves of time. 



a 



VIII 

ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 

THEN said they unto him, Say now 
Shibboleth : and he said Sibboleth : 
for he could not frame to pronounce it right. 
Then they took him, and slew him at the 
passages of Jordan : and there fell at that 
time of the Ephraimites forty and two 
thousand." ' 

This was a rather drastic method of 
ensuring general accuracy in speaking the 
language ; one sometimes wishes it were 
not obsolete. Christian civilisation has 
made an enormous advance on Old Testa- 
ment ideas of morality — but the ancient 
heroes knew what they wanted, and how to 
get it. I would there were some modern 
practicable scheme for improving the pro- 
nunciation of English, not merely among 
pupils in our schools, but among the teachers. 

130 



English Pronunciation 131 

We have daily evidence in America of bar- 
barous assaults made by those who ought to 
know better on the defenceless mother- 
tongue — assaults made with impunity in 
the absence of the axe. No teacher in 
school or college should permit a single 
one of his pupils to speak the language 
more accurately than he. The American 
school — which should be a temple where 
the English language is treated with rever- 
ence — is sometimes a scene of conical 
desecration. I am not at all attacking 
colloquial slang, which, in its metaphoric 
picturesqueness, is often the very life of 
speech : I am thinking of the careless mutila- 
tion of words in good and regular standing. 
A fundamental thing that all teachers 
should preach and practise is the un- 
affectedly correct pronunciation of that 
language which is now heard in the utter- 
most parts of the earth. Furthermore, the 
very difficulties of English pronunciation 
make the successful surmounting of them 
a glorious achievement, and one that 



132 Teaching in School and College 

should appeal to the spirit of youth, 
which loves a desperate undertaking. Ger- 
man is practically a phonetic language : 
and leaving out the matter of accent, it is 
easier for an American, with a little in- 
struction, to speak German words correctly 
than it is for him to conquer the wild and 
lawless army of English syllables. Let us, 
then, at the start not minimise the strength 
of the foe : let this rather become an in- 
spiration. 

No one can accuse me of apeing the 
English : indeed, I am more of a Jingo than 
an Anglo-maniac. But, in the last analysis, 
the pronunciation of cultivated English- 
men is the final test as to how most words 
should be spoken. I say pronunciation, 
rather than inflection ; for the American 
imitation of what is known as the "English 
accent" is proper matter for laughter. 
And I say "most words," because there are 
certain words which are pronounced quite 
differently in England than in America, and 
which it seems an affectation to copy here. 



English Pronunciation 133 

Some of these are Clerk ^ Trait, Schedule, 
Fracas, Lieutenant, and the last letter in the 
alphabet, which Shakespeare calls by a 
bad name. There is no reason why we 
should attempt to force these on an Ameri- 
can public which has repeatedly declined 
to accept them. But there is one word, 
been, which the English universally pro- 
nounce like the sacred vegetable of Boston, 
and which is gaining ground so rapidly in 
our country that it seems sure ultimately to 
prevail. 

Another English pronunciation that is 
certain to conquer in this country, and that 
has already gained the majority of culti- 
vated Americans, is the broad A, To one 
like myself, brought up from childhood with 
a flat Last, Calf, Laugh, Aunt, etc., it was 
years before I could speak these words 
broadly without feeling like a (flat) Ass ; but 
after heroic and persistent endeavour, I 
now pronounce them broadly without even 
the consciousness of unusual virtue. It is 
only in gusts of anger or sudden excite- 



134 Teaching in School and College 

ment that I descend from the heights to the 
flats, even as the dog to his Scriptural menu. 
Next to the first letter in the alphabet, the 
most shamefully treated of the five vowels 
is the [/, and the combination of the letters 
EW, that should resemble it in accuracy, as 
it does now in sin. There should be a 
distinct difference between the sound of U 
and double 0, actually observable to the 
naked ear in such words as Duke, Duty, 
Constitution, Enthusiasm, Tuesday, News, 
The letter 0, while not mishandled like the 
U, is treated with scant courtesy, and often 
with absolute neglect, in such words as 
Innocent, Violent, Violet; indeed, the latter 
word is often pronounced as though it were 
spelled Vialit. This same inoffensive and 
entirely respectable vowel is dragged ab- 
surdly out of shape in such words as 
Mock, Dog, Boss, God, Moss, where it is 
literally given an Aw-ful sound. Our most 
popular vowel, E, is abominably treated 
in such words as Cellar, Yellow, Philadelphia, 
where it is given the sound of U\ this is 



English Pronunciation 135 

even more common and more ugly in two 
useful words, Very and American. 

We laugh (with a broad A^ I hope) at 
the Cockney for making the H silent 
where it should be plainly heard, but we 
imitate him in the combination WH, 
where the H should have its value as 
clearly as though the spelling were HW, as 
it used to be, and ought to have re- 
mained. The majority of Americans play 
Wist, discuss the price of Weat, ancf have, 
apparently, not the faintest notion of how 
such words as When, Where, and Why 
should be pronounced. The dog letter, R, 
has a curious fate in American mouths : it 
is either unduly accented in such words as 
Here and Dinner (Middle West) or it is 
hitched on to the end of words like Idea^ 
Law, Thaw, and Saw, where it is as awk- 
ward as a sailor on horseback. Listen to 
any Yankee, when he says "I have no idea 
of it," and you will note that he speaks the 
truth. 

Most Americans are mortally afraid to 



136 Teaching in School and College 

shove the accent on polysyllabic words 
sufficiently far back. Such words as Lamen- 
table^ Exquisite^ Hospitable, and Vehemently 
should invariably be accented vehemently 
on the first syllable. 



IX 

TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE 

IT Is a common saying that English 
Literature cannot be taught; but it is 
false, for I have been teaching it twenty 
years. The problems of the teacher of Eng- 
lish are not the problems of those wko teach 
Mathematics, physical science, and foreign 
languages, but it is absurd to suppose Eng- 
lish cannot be taught, and taught in a disci- 
plinary as well as in an instructive fashion. 
All this depends partly on the method, and 
mainly on the teacher. Someone has said 
that there is naturally more discipline in 
the study of Mathematics than in the study 
of History, if History be taught one hour a 
week and Mathematics five : put them on an 
equal allotment and on an equal dignity, and 
it is at least possible that the disparity would 
not appear so grossly. For a great many 

137 



138 Teaching in School and College 

years, the idea prevailed at Oxford and 
Cambridge that English Literature could 
not be taught. Anglo-Saxon could be 
taught, either as a foreign language, or as 
a linguistic science ; historical English gram- 
mar and phonetics could be taught, but 
not Literature. Such ideas are now losing 
ground. 

If distinction in philology and linguistics 
were an absolute sine qua non for the teacher 
of English Literature, I should have to seek 
another occupation. I have the highest 
respect for linguistic studies, and realise 
their importance. But they affect me ex- 
actly as other sciences do — I have no 
talent for them, and no deep interest there. 
I know this sounds like blasphemy, but 
it happens to be the humble truth. I went 
through the grind of Anglo-Saxon, as every 
would-be professor of English Literature 
should do. At Yale we quite properly, and 
with my active and hearty approval and 
support, require the study of Anglo-Saxon 
as a requisite to the doctor's degree in 



Teaching English Literature 139 

English. Not only is it excellent training 
and a fundamental basis for the study of the 
language, but every candidate for a teacher's 
position in English may be forced to accept 
a position where he will be called on to 
teach elementary Anglo-Saxon, and he must 
be qualified to meet this emergency. There 
are those who prefer the study of Linguistics 
to the study of Literature. This causes 
me no surprise. There are those who prefer 
the study of Mathematics to Literature, — 
why not ? I gaze upon them not with pity 
or wonder, but with an awful respect, 
knowing that I could never attain to such 
heights. As a young man, I was free to 
choose, and did not wish to teach subjects 
for which I had no talent and which I did 
not enjoy. I chose to teach Literature. 

I had some little difficulties at the outset. 
After two years of graduate study at Yale, 
I proceeded to Harvard and interviewed 
Professor Child. I told him that I had 
come there to pursue special studies in 
English Literature, and mentioned a list 



140 Teaching in School and College 

I had picked out in the catalogue. He 
recommended me to take four other courses 
instead, which I saw were mainly lin- 
guistic. / I remarked that these did not 
interest me, that I had come with definite 
plans of what I wished to undertake, and 
must go elsewhere if not allowed to follow 
my inclinations. He was finally good 
enough not only to accede, but to give me 
his blessing, saying that the majority of 
graduate students did not know what they 
wanted, had to be fed by hand, and that it 
was refreshing to find a student with 
independence and a programme. I was 
greatly comforted and encouraged, and 
found the year most profitable. 

In teaching English Literature in the 
schools, except in those unfortunate cases 
where everything else has to be sacrificed 
in order to make the pupil pass the college 
English entrance examinations, the teacher 
should remember that the main object 
of his work in the classroom is not word 
study, is not the grinding out of classical 



Teaching English Literature 141 

allusions, is not unrelated biographical de- 
tails of authors, but the awakening in a 
pupil's mind of a love of reading. A teacher 
should not be distressed if a boy or girl 
reads a lot of trash outside of school hours : 
it is better to read trash than to read nothing. 
When I was a small boy, I read hundreds of 
volumes that were in themselves worthless 
— the "Outward Bound Series" by Oliver 
Optic (I can remember Lieutenant Shuffles 
to this day) ; the "Army and Navy*Series" 
by the same author, containing the histories 
of those remarkably successful young gentle- 
men, Tom and Jack Somers ; row on row of 
Harry Castlemon's books. The Sports- 
man^s Club in the Saddle, etc. ; the entire 
series of Jack Harkaway's adventures with 
the Indians, and in other perils ; an amaz- 
ing number of detective stories — Macon 
Moore is on your track! all of Horatio 
Alger's exciting and priggishly moral tales. 
What did I get out of this stuff 1 I obtained 
a love for reading. I realised the inex- 
haustible delight there was in books, the 



142 Teaching in School and College 

possibility of an instant and wonderful 
change of scene from my humdrum little 
existence to the plains of the West, or the 
snow-capped mountains of the deep. I 
obtained an enormously increased English 
vocabulary, the ability to read English 
with speed and pleasure, and a constant, if 
crude, stimulation of the imagination. It 
was when I was in this welter of trash, and 
hungry for more, that a city librarian, 
Mr. Frank B. Gay of Hartford, tactfully 
introduced me to something better. I went 
down to the institute to take out some new 
books by Oliver Optic. Mr. Gay suggested 
that I read Shakespeare instead. Just to 
please him, I consented to try, and he gave 
me Julius Ccesar. I became so intensely 
interested in the play that before a year 
had passed, I had read all the dramas of 
William Shakespeare. My taste was ex- 
traordinary: I thought Titus Andronicus 
a much superior play to Othello, simply 
because it was a blood and thunder story : 
it was, indeed, rather my favourite play. 



Teaching English Literature 143 

But it was something to have read all of 
Shakespeare when I was twelve years old. 
I could not have done this, had I not 
already formed the reading habit — had I 
not learned to read a long book with ease 
and speed. I owe this largely to silly tales 
of adventure. 

If boys or girls have the reading habit, 
their attention can be diverted to good 
books instead of bad ; but if they don't 
read at all, or read slowly and with diffi- 
culty, the task of the teacher is a thousand 
times harder. The teacher must try to 
cultivate a love of rea ding, then the ability 
to discriminate between good and bad books, 
and thus the formation of taste, which is 
the beginning of criticism. This cannot 
be done by the teacher's forcing his own 
opinion on the class, or the opinions of 
distinguished critics ; nor by the constant 
denunciation of trash, or a false attitude 
toward it. You can't cure a drunkard by 
telling him that whiskey does not taste 
good, because he knows better. 



144 Teaching in School and College 

The way to learn to read a foreign lan- 
guage is not to begin with some ponderous 
work, but with a novel or play that is so 
exciting that one is intensely eager to read 
the next page, and so learns the language 
in spite of himself. 

Literature read in schools and colleges 
must be brought into constant relation 
with life rather than with grammars, 
dictionaries, and works of reference, though 
these all have their place. Boys and girls 
are intensely practical as well as imagina- 
tive; they feel positive values. As Pro- 
fessor Charlton Lewis has wisely said, 
"we are likely to succeed in impressing 
upon our pupils an author's view of moral 
questions, his attitude toward life, his pre- 
sentments of human character, his own 
character, the plausibility and justice of 
his narrative." These are the things that 
boys and girls actually feel, and can be made 
to feel more intensely. 

The best work is often done by a faithful 
teacher outside of the classroom, for the 



Teaching English Literature 145 

best teaching is always between teacher 
and individual rather than between teacher 
and squad. A few words in season to the 
intelligent and to the dullard, a personal 
interest in their reading, a little talk with 
them about books. At the earliest possible 
age, each pupil should be encouraged to 
own books, to start a private library. The 
instinct of ownership is enormously strong 
in boys and girls. "This belongs to me." 
"Is that your dog?" This passion for 
ownership, once directed toward the ac- 
cumulation of books, may lead to astonish- 
ing and permanent results for good. Let 
them get the habit of collecting books as 
every boy collects stamps, eggs, minerals, 
post-cards, butterflies. 

This is one reason why I have always 
believed that the public purchase of text- 
books in schools, and the loaning of them 
to the pupils is a bad thing. It is better 
that their families should make the sacrifice 
and each student own the book that he uses 
in class. 



146 Teaching in School and College 

In freshman and sophomore instruction 
in English Literature, the teacher finds 
himself placed in a greater responsibility 
than the teacher of Mathematics or foreign 
languages. The recitation cannot run itself, 
cannot move on predetermined lines. In 
Mathematics there are problems to be done in 
the classroom, at the desks or on the board. 
In Latin the text must be pronounced, 
must be translated ; there are the necessary 
questions on grammatical construction. In 
English there is nothing to translate, nothing 
to write on the board ; the responsibility 
falls on the teacher, and he must make his 
own way. 

There is no better author to begin with 
than Shakespeare : he interests all kinds of 
minds, is the greatest writer in literature, 
and the most fruitful to teach. A complete 
and unexpurgated text should be used in 
colleges, one without too many notes, and 
especially one without too much critical 
matter in the introduction. If the students 
will do it, it is well to encourage them to have 



Teaching English Literature 147 

their copies of the play rebound and inter- 
leaved, so that they can make notes of 
the interpretations in the classroom, and 
make them in the proper places. Lessons 
should be short, and every line studied. 
Three hours a week for a month is not too 
long a time to spend on one play. As each 
student is called on, it is well to have him 
read aloud a dozen lines, before questions 
are put. Most students are wretched 
readers, have miserable enunciation, and 
slovenly pronunciation. The teacher has a 
chance to help incidentally here. The best 
passages can be read aloud at various times 
in the hour by the teacher himself, of course 
not "dramatically," or in a theatrical 
style, but with intelligence. Interpretative 
reading aloud by the teacher is exceedingly 
valuable, and sometimes better than a 
commentary. I have known many students 
who never realised the beauty or true 
meaning of a passage, until they heard it 
read aloud by the teacher. The late Pro- 
fessor Hiram Corson may have carried this 



148 Teaching in School and College 

to excess : he believed that interpretative 
reading aloud was the method for instruction 
in Literature. He said that a certain can- 
didate for the doctor's degree had every 
qualification but one, but that this deficiency 
was fatal, and would utterly prevent his 
success as a teacher. The candidate had 
lost two front teeth ! 

I should not insist on reading aloud as 
the sole method or the best, and it should 
not be indulged in too frequently. But 
it has an important place. The finest 
reader of Shakespeare's verse that I have 
ever heard, either on or oif the stage, was 
Professor Child. He occasionally read a 
page aloud in the classroom, and it was better 
than volumes of commentaries. The lines be- 
came illuminated with meaning; took on 
new interest and significance. 

Shakespeare's language must be under- 
stood. It is all well enough to talk about 
the value of aesthetic criticism, and the 
killing dulness of philological study. Es- 
thetic criticism has no value at all, unless it 



Teaching English Literature 149 

IS based on accurate knowledge. There was 
one critic who said that Shakespeare some- 
times wrote nonsense, which is, perhaps, 
true, only he selected an unfortunate illus- 
tration. He took the line from The Tempest^ 
"The fringed curtains of thine eye advance," 
and said this was nonsense, for how could 
anyone advance his eyelids } The trouble 
was, the critic did not know what the word 
"advance" meant in the sentence under 
fire, so the recoil of his criticism wa» greater 
than the discharge, which happens to many 
critics. In some ways, Shakespeare is a 
very obscure writer, as is shown by the fact 
that after three hundred years of criticism, 
scholars and readers have been unable to 
agree whether or not his most famous 
character was sane. Some say Hamlet was 
mad, others say he only pretended to be, 
while Dr. Furness, who ought to know 
better than anybody, says Hamlet was 
neither mad nor pretended to be ! But the 
first step is unquestionably a knowledge of 
what the words mean. I read a speech by 



150 Teaching in School and College 

a popular actor, who has acted Hamlet 
many years, and it was clear that he 
did not know the meaning of the word 
"coil" in Hamlet's great soliloquy. Some- 
times the history of certain words like 
Orlando's "quintain" can be effectively 
introduced. But whether much or little 
time be devoted to philology and word 
history, and that will probably depend, no 
matter what be said, on the teacher's 
hobbies, the students must learn the mean- 
ing of every single word in the play, and 
their definitions must in every instance be 
precise and adequate. In this way, not 
only is Shakespeare properly studied, -but 
the students may form that most desirable 
habit of reading with understanding — of 
not proceeding to the next sentence until 
they have understood the one immediately 
under the eye. 

Characterisation is an important and a 
fascinating part of Shakespeare study, and 
there should be a wide difference of opinion 
expressed in the class, stimulated by the 



Teaching English Literature 151 

teacher. One reason why people differ so 
much in their estimation of Shakespeare's 
personages is simply because his men and 
women are so real. The more alive a 
character is, the more difficult is it to sum 
him up in a phrase or a formula. And 
never, never should pupils be allowed to 
fall into that detestable habit so common 
among people who are not students, of 
substituting phrases for ideas. If the 
majority of the class do not feel the intense 
reality of Shakespeare's characters, and if 
they do not hold individual strong opinions, 
the teacher is a failure. The men and 
women should be judged by life, not by 
book standards. College undergraduates 
ought to understand the friendship between 
Hamlet and Horatio. 

In studying plot construction I would 
study it naturally and simply, and avoid, 
so far as possible, the use of technical terms 
and diagrams. Every student should learn 
what is meant by the three unities ; but 
I do not believe in the employment of 



152 Teaching in School and College 

terms like "rising" and "falling action," 
and making the students answer like parrots 
questions of that nature. I have seen some 
works on Shakespeare that employ strange 
terminology; others filled with diagrams, 
that look like treatises on Geometry. I 
remember with what profit and delight I 
read one part of Professor Moulton's work, 
Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist^ and with 
what disappointment I read the other part. 
So long as this distinguished critic and 
scholar confined himself to the specific 
criticism of the plays he selected, he was 
admirable, he was profound, he was sugges- 
tive, he was illuminating ; when he wan- 
dered off into strange theories, the employ- 
ment of curious terms, I felt cold and sick 
at heart. One of the most stimulating 
lectures I ever heard as a student was his 
lecture on "The Humour of Ben Jonson," 
where he selected those most difficult plays. 
Every Man Out of his Humour, Cynthia^s 
Revels, and The Poetaster, He entirely 
changed my conception of these literary 



Teaching English Literature 153 

curiosities, and I obtained permanent ad- 
vantage. But abstract theories are out 
of place in teaching classes something so 
intensely concrete as drama. Teaching 
must be concrete, for that is what seizes and 
holds the attention. How many sermons 
have I heard that were killed by an ab- 
stract opening. "There are three kinds of 
truth : scientific truth, historical truth, 
and" — but no one hears the third kind, for 
everybody is asleep. But if a preacher 
begins, "Last night I stood on the corner of 
Broadway and Fourteenth Streets, and I saw " 
— everyone sits up ; what was it he saw ? 

The plots of Shakespeare's plays can be 
compared with well-known contemporary 
plays with which the students are familiar ; 
and when an actor comes to the university 
town, and produces a Shakespearean play, 
the students should be urged to attend, and 
to observe the interpretation of characters 
and passages discussed in the class. All 
these things help to make the work alive. 

Shakespeare wrote his plays not for 



154 Teaching in School and College 

professors to teach, or for scholars to edit 
with introductions and notes, but because he 
was an interpreter of Life. This is, after 
all, the one great thing to which all learning, 
study, and annotation are subsidiary. They 
have their place, but it is not the chief place. 
No matter how learned a teacher or critic 
may be, no matter how profound an author- 
ity on Shakespeare's grammar, language, 
and contemporaiy history, if he is more 
interested in these things than he is in 
humanity, he cannot teach, and he cannot 
be a really good critic. A pedant may 
miss the whole point of a scene simply 
because he is ignorant of human nature. 
A love of human nature and a knowledge of 
it are the essential foundation not merely 
of teaching, but of Shakespearean scholar- 
ship. Shakespeare's main subject, the main 
subject, indeed, of nearly all great poets, is 
Humanity. It is impossible, therefore, that 
the opinion of a learned critic who knows 
nothing of men and women can be valuable, 
because in spite of his book learning, the critic 



Teaching English Literature 155 

simply does not know what Shakespeare 
is talking about. Literature deals first, 
last, and all the time with Life. Is not the 
life more than meat, and the body than the 
raiment ? When I was a sophomore in col- 
lege, studying Sophokles with that admir- 
able scholar and teacher, Professor Frank 
Tarbell, I had to write an essay on the ques- 
tion, "Does Sophokles represent CEdipus as 
suffering for sin ? " I read the Greek text 
carefully from beginning to end, outside of 
the classroom, and it seemed to me clear 
that CEdipus was the plaything of fate, and 
that the idea that he was punished for his 
sins was ridiculous. I read a considerable 
number of English critics on the point, and 
I was chilled by their remote attitude toward 
so passionate and human a struggle. A 
few years later, I had a remarkable conver- 
sation at three o'clock in the morning with 
that genial Irishman, Professor Mahaffy of 
Dublin. "Why," said he, "the matter 
with most of these fellows who write about 
Greek drama is that they don't know 



156 Teaching in School and College 

anything about life, about men and women. 
They spend their days and nights in a 
room." Still, how is it possible that a man 
can spend his life studying Greek Literature 
and yet know so little about humanity ? If 
he cannot learn it in human associations, 
the wonder is that he does not get it from 
the old Greeks themselves. 

I do not believe that college classes 
should be forced to learn Shakespeare by 
heart. I am obliged reluctantly to disagree 
with some of the best teachers on this 
question. Professor Child always selected 
a considerable number of passages from the 
plays, and required the memorising of them 
from every student. Each semiannual ex- 
amination had a part of it devoted to verbal 
memorising. This has always been easy 
for me, although I found it easier as a boy 
than I do as a man. But there are many 
college students who simply cannot learn 
passages by heart, or who succeed in learning 
them only by prodigious effort, the result 
not being worth the trouble. I should 



Teaching English Literature 157 

always recommend certain passages to be 
committed to memory, and perhaps give 
extra credit. And I think it is desirable 
that every examination paper dealing with 
Literature, except where a great mass of 
poetry and prose has been read rapidly, 
should contain quoted passages, the student 
being required to locate them, to state who 
spoke them, or to comment upon them in- 
telHgently. 

Teaching Nineteenth-century Literature is 
more difficult than teaching Shakespeare, 
there being far less annotation required, 
and far less verbal difficulties that demand 
elucidation. But if the author before the 
class is constantly kept in touch with life, 
immense good may be accomplished. An 
hour can be spent, if necessary, on Brown- 
ing's Meeting at Night and Parting at 
Morning. The cultivation of true criticism, 
the interpretation of the author's meaning, 
the development of the love of reading, 
these should ever be the teacher's goal. 
And while he should never force on the 



158 Teaching in School and College 

class his own opinions of literature or his 
own interpretations, he should not be afraid 
to express them clearly and boldly, after he 
has sought to bring out ideas from the 
students. We hear a great deal said against 
, sign-post criticism, but it is absolutely 
true that many students do not see the 
beauty or significance of a passage until it 
is called to their attention. I read some- 
where that beauties that have to be pointed 
out are not beauties at all. What nonsense ! 
How many people see all there is in a picture, 
a symphony, or a poem without expert 
assistance ? The teacher must be a leader 
and a guide as well as a drill-master or a 
mere raiser of dust. 

When a historical course in literature is 
taught, like English Literature of the 
Eighteenth Century, Elizabethan Drama, 
or American Literature, it is eminently 
desirable, if there be time for it, and the 
teacher have sufficient energy to read the 
themes, that some original critical written 
work be regularly required from the pupils. 



Teaching English Literature 159 

Once in a while, it is well to have a student 
read aloud his essay to the class : it gives 
him a mysterious but powerful intellectual 
stimulus to do this, and so long as he 
lives, he will not forget the experience. 
When the teacher reads specimen themes * 
to the class, which he should do regularly, 
the names of the writers should, of course, 
never be mentioned. Nor should the "• 
teacher follow the example of one in- 
structor whose class I attended. Thei% were 
two hundred students in the room, and he 
began the hour by announcing, "I will read 
four themes, as follows," giving the heading 
of each one of the four essays in advance. 
The result was that one hundred and ninety- 
six students immediately showed signs of 
general lassitude. They knew their efforts 
were not to be heard. Announce one theme 
at a time. After it is finished, every student 
in the room has a mild excitement akin to 
owning a lottery ticket : will my theme come 
next? It is always the teacher's duty to 
keep up the tension in the classroom by any 
legitimate method. 



i6o Teaching in School and College 

An excellent scheme for making the 
students read their lessons attentively, study 
carefully the peculiar individual literary 
style of each author, and receive definite 
profit from such study, is to require a short 
written imitation of each author in the 
course, the prose masters primarily, though 
optional work can be assigned in the poets. 
I taught sophomores once a general histori- 
cal course in English Literature. When we 
were reading the Faerie Queene^ I gave an 
opportunity for the composition of Spen- 
serian stanzas having an archaic flavour: 
a large number of students took advantage 
of this, and I think they learned in that way 
the technical scheme of the stanza better 
than they could have by any memorising, 
either of the rime order or of the poetry. 
When we came to Bacon, they wrote 
short essays, trying to catch the super- 
ficial peculiarities of his style ; when we 
reached Addison, they wrote imaginary 
Spectator papers. The results of this 
method convinced me of its efficiency. 



Teaching English Literature i6i 

And the students obtained much innocent 
amusement from their own and their class- 
mates' efforts. A successful parody is often 
the best kind of criticism. Swinburne's 
John Jones is worth a dozen volumes di- 
rected against Browning's obscurity, harsh 
diction, and whimsical rimes. 

All students of English Literature, both in 
school and college, should be forced to learn 
the geography of England. But this reform 
must begin at the other end. The ignorance 
of American teachers is scandalous. I hap- 
pened to have the honour of addressing 
several hundred teachers on a certain occa- 
sion, and I found that only two or three knew 
anything whatever of this matter. We often 
laugh at Englishmen for their grotesque 
errors in speaking of towns and states in 
America, but our own ignorance of England 
is more general, more profound, and in- 
finitely less excusable. Every teacher of 
English Literature in school or college who 
can possibly find the money should regard 
it as a necessary part of his equipment as 

M 



1 62 Teaching in School and College 

a scholar to visit England and study the 
literary geography of the country. It is 
just as scholarly to do this, and often more 
valuable, than it is to spend a whole summer 
poring over old books and manuscripts in the 
British Museum, and I have made it a 
point to do both and hope to do both 
again. College students are densely, abys- 
mally ignorant of the counties of England : 
the names mean absolutely nothing to 
them. You say, "Tennyson was a Lincoln- 
shire man," which ought to mean something : 
It means nothing. I now require of every 
student an elementary knowledge of English 
geography, so that at least they will re- 
member that York and Devon are two quite 
different places. I have been in every 
county in England, in many of them on a 
bicycle, and I am sure that I understand 
English Literature better and can teach it 
more intelligently than I could without 
this knowledge. English Literature should 
be studied and taught with a map. And a 
teacher should encourage his students, when 



Teaching English Literature 163 

they go abroad in the summer, as so many 
do now, to make literary pilgrimages, in- 
stead of spending the precious time dawdling 
about hotels. 

It ought to be superfluous to say that 
every teacher of English Literature should 
be a man or woman of sound culture ; but 
unfortunately this is not always the case. 
Under the modern strain after the Ph.D., 
our universities are sending out many 
teachers who are not even well-yead. 
Graduate students should spend plenty of 
time in reading, in filling up the great gaps 
in their knowledge of literature. I know 
one excellent linguistic scholar who was 
suddenly called upon to teach courses in 
English Literature. He had to read six 
hours a day just to keep ahead of his 
classes. Another young brilliant doctor, 
who obtained a post in an Eastern college, 
wrote back to me, "For Heaven's sake, 
make the graduate students read ! I don't 
know anything." 

Although the requirement of the doctor's 



164 Teaching in School and College 

degree has become a fetich, it serves a good 
purpose. Every man or woman who intends 
to teach in a college should have performed 
one solid, original piece of genuine scholarly 
work. Not only has he mastered one definite 
thing, but in the process he has learned how to 
work, he has learned the use of the essential 
tools of scholarship, and he has a scholarly 
ideal. But along with this and no matter 
how minute may be the particular subject 
of his thesis, he should read and read, and 
be familiar with English Literature. How 
unfortunate it is that such a point should 
require any emphasis ! No doctor's degree 
should be given unless the candidate can 
read French and German easily — the latter 
is a rare accomplishment — and unless the 
candidate has passed an oral examination 
in the presence of the professors of the 
department, not on a manual of English 
Literature, but in English authors. 

But important as the doctorate is, no 
college or university should refuse to ap- 
point a man to the teaching staff, or to 



Teaching English Literature 165 

refuse advancement to him, simply because 
he has not been branded with the sign. If 
he can give satisfactory evidence of his 
scholarship, culture, and ability to teach, 
it would be silly to insist on the degree. The 
man from whom I learned more English 
Literature than from any other. Professor 
Henry A. Beers of Yale, has never taken nor 
received a doctorate, but his scholarship 
is varied, accurate, and profound. He is 
an excellent example of what I mSan by 
sound cuhure. When I was a graduate 
student, I took an ideal course with him 
(in the literature of the Restoration), a 
course in which I was the only pupil. I 
read under his direction, and brought my 
notes to him at stated intervals. His 
learning and judicious criticism were a 
wonderful combined corrective and stimulus 
to my enthusiasm. And, now that I am 
getting personal, one of the most brilliant 
critics and teachers of literature that I 
ever knew. Professor Lewis Gates of Har- 
vard, was no doctor; neither is Professor 



1 66 Teaching in School and College 

George Baker, the quality of whose scholar- 
ship and teaching is beyond question ; and 
the situation becomes positively funny, 
when we remember that Professor Kittredge, 
the most erudite English scholar in America, 
whose name is in the prefaces of hundreds of 
important books, never received the Ph.D. 
in course. Perhaps these men would all in- 
sist on it now : as to that, I do not know. 
I merely remark that actual scholarship is 
more important than the sign and seal. 

The number and variety of courses in 
English Literature are now a notable feature 
of every college catalogue ; every student 
feels that he must take "EngHsh." There 
is a practical reason for this which appeals 
to the student mind. It is simply the fact 
that every college graduate is supposed to 
have a fair knowledge of the history of 
English Literature and of its masterpieces. 
Most of our graduates live in civilised 
communities, and in social relations with 
intelligent people. A large staple of con- 



Teaching English Literature 167 

versation consists of books and reading; 
the exchange of views on poets and novelists 
is one of the great clearing houses of human 
intercourse. A man with no taste in reading 
and with no knowledge of English Literature 
has no real place in modern civilisation. 
He is just as grotesque — just as much out 
of his element in modern life as a South Sea 
Islander would be in a Fifth Avenue draw- 
ing-room. 

But while this constitutes a strong practi- 
cal motive for electing English, it is, after 
all, the least important reason for doing so. 
It is, indeed, properly analysed, a Philistine 
impulse — the desire to obtain as much 
practical benefit as may be, with the least 
amount of unpleasant exertion. The real 
driving purpose of a student who enters 
upon a year's work in an English course 
should be lilgher and nobler than that; 
and the professor should not teach literature 
from the bargain-counter point of view. 
James Russell Lowell said that the chief 
glory of a college education was that it 



1 68 Teaching in School and College 

taught nothing useful — and I find myself 
in hearty agreement with the truth under- 
lying this paradox. The study of EngHsh 
Literature is not intended to enhance a 
man's social value, and the study of English 
composition is not intended to produce 
creative writers ; any more than the study 
of Geology is meant to make successful 
miners, or the study of Political Science 
to produce capitalists. I suppose the two 
greatest teachers of Political Science this 
country has ever seen were Professor 
W. G. Sumner and Professor Arthur T. 
Hadley, both of Yale. I had the privilege 
of studying under both men, as an under- 
graduate and as a graduate student. Yet 
I think I have no more cash in my 
pocket now than if I had never attended 
their courses. But the remarks of those 
teachers in the classroom — the superfluous 
wealth of splendid minds — are part of my 
mental furniture to this day. 

Literature is the immortal part of history. 
It is the interpretation of life. The serious 



Teaching English Literature 169 

study of literature increases immensely a 
man's grasp of life's great problems, and 
it does more — in the language of the poet, it 
makes a man's reach exceed his grasp — and 
what does Philistine America need more than 
that ? This is, perhaps, why a leading pro- 
fessor of Civil Engineering said that the best 
undergraduate course a student could take 
was any course except Engineering. I also 
heard a successful engineer, who had forty 
practical young engineers under his Jontrol, 
say that the chief thing these ambitious 
men needed was a genuine preliminary 
academic training, the lack of which was 
cruelly evident in their work and in their 
ideas. 

President Timothy Dwight told us in our 
senior year that the happiest man is the 
man who thinks the most interesting 
thoughts. This definition of happiness has 
not only been of immense service to me, but 
I have had the pleasure of passing It on to 
many hundred men and women. It con- 
stitutes, I think, the best possible defence 



170 Teaching in School and College 

of a college education in general, and of the 
study of literature in particular. A man 
who studies literature is forever hanging 
pictures on the walls of his mind : life be- 
comes to him more interesting, and, therefore, 
more happy as he grows older. His favourite 
authors are both a refuge and an inspiration. 
And every undergraduate who finishes a 
course in English Literature should feel 
not that he has completed that course, but 
that he has begun it. If a man does not 
have the love of good reading in college, it 
is probable that he will not acquire it later ; 
the terrible cutthroat competition of modern 
business and professional life will conquer 
and dominate his soul. He may become 
a first-class business or legal machine; he 
will never become a man. On the other 
hand if one really learns to appreciate and 
to enjoy literature while in school or college, 
one will always find or make leisure hours 
for it later. Men usually do what they 
really want to do ; for where your treasure 
is, there will your heart be also. 



X 

THE MORAL ASPECT OF TEACHING 

NO progression is possible without some 
loss. Every change, every advance, 
no matter how necessary, no matter how 
salutary, is accompanied by the subtraction 
of something valuable. In contentplating 
any reform, any forward movement in 
religion, politics, social life, or education, 
those who see only the gain in the new condi- 
tions are the Radicals ; those who see only 
what has been or is to be lost are the Con- 
servatives. The question for every thought- 
ful person, after counting the cost of a 
proposed new scheme, is to consider whether 
or not the gain will outweigh the loss. 

In educational affairs, I have no doubt that 
the elective system is an enormous improve- 
ment over the old cast-iron required pro- 
gramme: the introduction of Science, His- 

171 



172 Teaching in School and College 

tory, Literature, Economics, and Art simply- 
had to come. By the natural law of reaction, 
most of us went too far in the new direction, 
and those of us who believed in absolutely 
free electives had to haul in our horns, and 
endeavour to regain some of the good we had 
lost. Now we are crawling back, though we 
shall never cramp ourselves with the old 
fetters. Ultimate progress is not straight 
up, but by a spiral movement; for the 
most practicable way to reach the loftiest 
heights with our human limitations is not 
by direct scaling, but by a winding ascent. 
As compared with fifty years ago, a great 
change has come over the appearance, dress, 
manners, conversation, and habits of the 
teacher, especially of the college professor. 
I have no doubt that a modern faculty meet- 
ing presents a quite different picture from 
that of former times. Whatever the old 
professor actually was, he used to look like 
a guileless pedant ; now he strives to be 
and to look like a man of the world. 
When I was a freshman, some of our pro- 



The Moral Aspect of Teaching 173 

fessors appeared in the classroom clad in a 
long, black frock-coat, built of broadcloth ; 
the modern professor wears the same kind of 
garments, next to his skin and next to the 
air, as those worn by the undergraduate. 
A man who entered upon the profession of 
teaching in the old times used to be regarded 
as a nun that takes the veil : his more 
worldly friends admired the sincerity and 
high purpose proved by such a resolution, 
but felt, also, a compound of pity and Regret. 
This unworldly, unpractical, eccentric type 
of professor survives now chiefly upon the 
stage, both in Europe and in America. One 
sees him often in the glare of the footlights, 
but rarely in real life. 

The modern professor is afraid of cant, 
afraid of being taken too seriously, afraid to 
preach, but not afraid of the mammon of 
unrighteousness. He is a member of clubs, 
and speaks the language of common life. 
He does not smell of his job, does not talk 
shop except with his colleagues, and the 
shrewd man of business who meets him 



174 Teaching in School and College 

casually does not guess his calHng. This 
complete transformation from the scholarly 
recluse to the man of the world has been 
accompanied with many distinct advantages. 
Professor and student meet on common 
.ground, without embarrassment, and with- 
out that secret contempt for each other that 
men of quite different interests often have. 
The humanising of the professor helps 
him also in his relations with the parents of 
students, and in all his associations with the 
citizens of the town where he dwells. 

It is desirable for the professor to be 
human and normal in appearance, manner, 
and conversation ; he has a mission as truly 
^s the minister of the Gospel. There are 
certain forms of religion where the clergyman 
must wear a uniform ; whatever may be 
the decided advantages of this, and there 
are many, they are outweighed in my judg- 
ment by the fact that everybody simulates 
a respect for the cloth, and it thus becomes 
more difficult to know men as they really are. 
The little group changes the conversation 



The Moral Aspect of Teaching 175 

when the man of God appears. This does 
not apply to the Roman Catholic priest, 
who performs every day valiant and noble 
police duty. He goes with authority straight 
into the households of his parish, just when 
they are least expecting a visit. A priest 
told me, and he was a wise and excellent 
man, that his country parishioners said to 
him, "Let us know when you are going 
to call." "You bet I won't !" said he. But 
the Protestant clergyman who wears m long 
coat and a white tie throws away his 
weapons. His chief business is with the 
ungodly ; but if the ungodly can see him a 
hundred yards away, the ungodly have time 
to escape. 

If only this desirable process of humanis- 
ing is not accompanied by a subtle moral de- 
terioration, by a lack of conviction, by a loss 
of high seriousness at heart, by a weakening 
of the motive for great and unselfish ser- 
vice ! A man is a fool to take himself too 
seriously ; but no man can take his life 
work too seriously. There are some profes- 



176 Teaching in School and College 

sors to-day, in various parts of our country, 
who cultivate a flippancy in their attitude 
toward their work, in their attitude toward 
their pupils, and in their attitude toward 
themselves. I have even read flippant in- 
troductions to what are supposed to be 
scholarly publications. I do not mean 
humorous and charming prefaces, such as 
that wonderful old man. Dr. Furnivall, used 
to write : no, I mean a tone quite different 
from that. 

The hatred of cant has reached such a 
plane to-day that many men are afraid to 
express any moral convictions, and if they 
do, are said to have no sense of humour. 
There are a considerable number who would 
rather be regarded as wicked, rather be 
regarded as fools, than incur the danger of a 
reputation of preaching. It is difficult for 
any man, who looks into his own heart, to 
give moral advice to another; but if he 
gives it only when it is sought, he should 
not be ashamed to express what he deeply 
believes to be true. This is especially 



The Moral Aspect of Teaching 177 

applicable to a teacher in his personal re- 
lations with students. There are some 
who will tell a student he had better not 
gamble, drink to excess, and cultivate evil 
associations, and then hasten to add: "Of 
course I see no moral objection to these 
things. It is simply on the ground of your 
health, from the point of view of common 
prudence, that I am speaking." The 
fallacy of all this lies in the fact that we 
encourage our students to love the ^ruth, 
and to follow, it regardless of personal dis- 
comfort, peril, and pain ; why, then, should 
we tell them that the only good reason for 
avoiding sin is because it is bad for their 
health, and injurious to their career ? 
Furthermore, I believe that the average 
student is more strongly deterred from vice 
by a belief that it is wrong than he is by any 
consideration for his health or his future 
prospects. Whatever may be the case 
with the wise children of this world, it is 
moral and religious training that keeps 
students straight, and not questions of 

N 



178 Teaching in School and College 

sociology and hygiene. As a class, they 
are not selfish enough to be forever thinking 
of their health, but are gloriously imprudent. 
Hygiene can never take the place of religion 
in the education of youth. 

No intellectually honest man can have 
religious and moral convictions merely by an 
effort of will ; but it is an enormous ad- 
vantage for a teacher to believe in something 
and to believe in it with all his might. You 
often see teachers smile to-day at the old- 
style college president, who was a clergy- 
man, either active or ex, and who taught 
moral philosophy. But those brave old 
captains in the army of righteousness used 
in some institutions to exercise a powerful 
influence for good, and to give tone to the 
whole place. A teacher who, whatever 
his doubts and individual peculiarities of 
faith, is at heart a sincere Christian, has 
frequent and wonderful opportunities to 
influence students toward those things that 
men of all creeds recognise as good 
things. 



The Moral Aspect of Teaching 179 

Yet I do not agree with one college presi- 
dent who in a public address said that no 
instructor or professor should be admitted 
to the institution who was not a "professing 
Christian." Truth is free, and every aspect 
of it important. I know too many ex- 
cellent college professors, men of high 
intellectual standing, who have no reli- 
gious belief, for me to subscribe to any 
such statement as that. Furthermore, the 
students will soon find out, if they kave 
any of that intellectual curiosity which it 
should be the teacher's delight to arouse 
and stimulate in them, that there are printed 
views just the opposite of those that they 
are taught, and that they are held by men of 
at least equal intellectual and moral standing 
as their religious professors. It is impor- 
tant that students in a university should 
become familiar right there with the views 
of history, philosophy, and religion held by 
professors who absolutely disagree with 
those of us who are Christians. And when 
we allude to books or to professors that 



i8o Teaching in School and College 

hold opinions that we emphatically reject, 
care should be taken to see that we do not 
misrepresent these opinions to our students, 
underestimate their force, or attempt to 
belittle their importance. A student loves 
fair play and an honest antagonist. Im- 
mensely as I admire Browning, I think he 
was unfortunate in his statement that fools 
disbelieve in immortality. I know many 
men who are certainly not fools, but who 
believe that death ends all. Give every 
aspect of the truth a fair chance in a fair 
field. The Christian ought to be the last 
man in the world to be afraid of the truth, 
for he has a philosophical basis, and thus a 
good reason, for believing in the ultimate 
triumph of truth. A Christian wants to 
know the truth, cost what it will. To 
borrow an idea from Mill, the man whose 
fear of consequences is stronger than his 
love of truth has no business to be a teacher. 
The teacher must be free, and allow others 
to be so. 

Tennyson says, — 



The Moral Aspect of Teaching i8i 

And dare we to this fancy give, 

That had the wild oat not been sown, 
The soil, left barren, scarce had grown 

The grain by which a man may live ? 

Or, if we held the doctrine sound 
For life outliving heats of youth. 
Yet who would preach it as a truth 

To those that eddy round and round ? 

Well, I would, for one I I do not believe 
in telling young men and women falsehoods 
because they might go to the devil if they 
knew the truth. If I really believed that 
dissipation were good for the average young 
man, I would frankly tell him so. But the 
facts are just the other way, as is shown by 
the attitude of those fathers who, when they 
were in college, lived vicious lives ; are 
they eager to have their children follow their 
example in this respect ? Because some of 
them have subsequently mastered their 
vices, and are now useful citizens, do they 
or do they not believe that these sins have 
done them good, and assisted them in their 



1 82 Teaching in School and College 

life progress ? If they do, they would re- 
joice to have their sons idle and dissipated, 
instead of sober and industrious. When 
they receive a letter from the dean, "I 
regret to say that your son was drunk last 
Saturday night," they would feel happier 
than if he had won a prize. They would 
exclaim, "This is splendid ! he is learning 
life ; he is by way of becoming a man." I 
once met a gentleman on the train, and, after 
a long conversation and many questions, he 
finally discovered that I was a college pro- 
fessor. He was highly interested, and said 
eagerly: "My son is going to Cornell next 
year. What kind of a university is it ? Do 
you think there is much bumming there ? " 
He fairly hung on my words as I answered 
him. I said, "Cornell is a university of the 
first class ; there are many students ; it is 
like other great universities, containing all 
kinds of young men, some noble, ambitious, 
and clean ; others merely ordinary ; others 
lazy, idle, and dissipated." The fond 
parent then remarked, "When I was a 



The Moral Aspect of Teaching 183 

young man, I was a terrible sport, but I 
cannot bear to think that my son should do 
the things that I did." 

Although I believe that it is well to have 
all shades of thought represented on the 
faculty of a large university, I would not vote 
for a college dean who was not a Christian. 
I regard a Christian faith as one of his as- 
sets, or, in other words, one of the essential 
qualifications for the position, like a knowl- 
edge of Mathematics for Civil Engineering. 
He is not only the chief of police, he is the 
student's friend, intimate adviser and coun- 
sellor. If ever a man needs religion in his 
work, It is the dean. Now by religion I 
do not mean a heavenly life insurance 
policy, which a man sees to once for all, 
and then goes about his daily task : I mean 
a life principle. Religion is a jealous thing : 
it must either have first place in a man's 
heart, or no place. It cannot be subordinate 
to any other aim, impulse, or passion. It 
accepts no compromises. It must either 
be the master of a man, his great guiding 



184 Teaching in School and College 

principle, or it is worse than worthless. 
Christianity is either the most important 
fact in the world, or it is a myth, like the 
stories of Mars and Venus. Thus I believe 
that the so-called denominational colleges 
have accomplished and are accomplishing 
vast results for good in our country. For 
they really believe in something, and stand 
for something. I hope it is not true, as is 
often stated, that some of them have 
really changed their principles to obtain 
money, selling their birthright for a mess 
of pottage. 

Whatever may be our notion of a college 
education, and almost every expert has a 
different one, culture without character is 
a poor thing. Unless the majority of 
students are actually better men when they 
graduate than when they enter, the college 
is a failure. 

There is a lot of nonsense talked about 
''compulsory" chapel, and "compulsory" 
religious exercises in college. These are 
really not compulsory at all, any more than 



The Moral Aspect of Teaching 185 

a college education is compulsory. If a 
boy or his parents do not wish that he be 
required to listen to a chapter of the Bible 
and a prayer, let him go to another in- 
stitution where he will not be annoyed. 
But what better way is there of beginning a 
day of college life than by hearing a portion 
of the best literature that the world has ever 
known, and then asking Divine help and 
inspiration for the day's problems ? My 
belief in daily chapel is not basecf on its 
democracy, or on the power of numbers, or 
on the value of making all the students 
get up early in the morning, though these 
are splendid by-products : my belief in it 
is based on the belief that the foundation of 
a college education should be religious. 

There is a passage in the New Testament 
that every good teacher understands. It 
describes how Some One, looking on a 
young man, loved him. When I think of the 
college generations of young men, manly, 
wholesome, unaffected, clean-hearted, that 
have passed through my classrooms, I often 



1 86 Teaching in School and College 

think that I have learned more from them 
than I have given. What fine fellows they 
are, and what a privilege for a teacher to live 
in the presence of perpetual youth ! And 
when some individual student, all aglow with 
the light of intellectual dawn, comes to me 
and asks some question, I cannot help feeling 
the same emotion that stirred the heart of 
the greatest Teacher in all history — I look 
on the young man and I love him. 



T 



HE following pages contain advertise- 
ments of a few of the Macmillan novels % 



MEW MACMILLAN FICTION BY LEADING AUTHORS 

Jalia France and Her Times 

By GERTRUDE ATHERTON, author of "Tower of Ivory," "The Con- 
queror," etc. Decorated cloth, ismo, $/.jo net 

" A brilliant story of modem society. . . . The best suffrage book up- 
to-date."— A^. Y. Times. 

"The big suffragette novel. ... A great story apart from its propa- 
ganda."—^. Y. Globe. 

"Plenty to provoke approbation. ... A good story. . . . The best 
that Mrs. Atherton has written." — N. Y. Sun. 

Joseph in Jeopardy 

By frank DANBY 

Cloth^ i2mo^ $i.3S net; postpaid^ $i.4S 
"The most humorous and entertaining novel of the season. . . . Far 
and away the best novel Mrs. Frankau has written." — N. Y. Tribune. 
" A masterpiece." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
" Portrayed with an uncommon sense of the comic spirit." — N. Y. Times. 

White Ashes 

By KENNEDY-NOBLE 

Decorated cloth, i2m.o, $1.2^ net; postpaid, $1.37 
"A big American novel. ... A successful presentation of the country's 
distinguishing genius. . . . Treated in a big, clear fashion, bound to 
meet responsive, sympathetic understanding." 

— (^Editorial) Chicago Inter- Ocean. 

" A clever book. . . . Unvaryingly attractive. . . . The reader chuckles 
over it with delight." — N. Y. Tribune. 

The Goodly Fellowship 

By RACHEL CAPEN SCHAUFFLER 

Cloth^ i2mo, $i.2j net 
A love story of missionary life, which for sheer human interest it is hard 
to surpass. 

" Has the charm of novelty. . . . Presents a picture clear and vivified." 

— Boston Globe. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



NEW FICTION 

The Touchstone of Fortune 

By CHARLES MAJOR 
Decorated cover, colored frontispiece, $1.25 net; postpaid, $1.5;. 
** Historical romance at its best." — AL V. Globe. 
" Interesting, entertaining, action swift and varied." 

— Chicago Inter-Ocean, 

"A romantic and exciting tale with two parallel love stories." 

— Literary Digest. 

Van Cleve 

By MARY S. WATTS, author of "Nathan Burke," "The Legacy," etc. 

Cloth, izmo, $1.35 net ; postage extra 
An up-to-date story, rich in character portrayal, in incident and human 
appeal, and which will, in all probability, be more popular than either 
" Nathan Burke " or " The Legacy," two novels which met with such 
wide favor. The hero. Van Qeve, is a young man who finds himself 
obliged, at the age of twenty, to support a family of foolish, good-hearted, 
ill-balanced women, and one shiftless, pompous old man — his grand- 
father, aunt, cousin, and uncle. Out of this situation the story grows 
which will be welcome to the many admirers of Mrs. Watts. 

The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne 

By KATHLEEN NORRIS, author of « Mother " 

Decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.2^ net; postage extra 
A story with a gripping theme, which vividly recalls the author's great 
success, " Mother." 

The Jugglers 

By molly ELLIOTT SEAWELL, author of "The Ladies' Battle," etc. 

Decorated cloth, ismo, illustrated, $1.00 net 
The varied experiences of a travelling band of singers and dancers just 
before and during the time of the Franco-Prussian War is the theme of 
tliis colorful story. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers * 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



IMPORTANT NEW FICTION 



The Healer 

By ROBERT HERRICK, Author of "Together," "The Com- 
mon Lot," etc. Cloth, i2mo, $1.35 net 
Mr. Herrick's new novel might be termed a complement to 
Together. Like that book, it deals with certain questions that 
belong specifically to America to-day, in the broadly realistic spirit 
that made Together one of the most notable contributions to 
American fiction. In this field Mr. Herrick is regarded by many 
critics as the leader among present-day writers of English fiction, 
and it is safe to expect that The Healer will arouse more than 
ordinary interest. 

The Believing Years 

By EDMUND LESTER PEARSON 

D xoraied cloth, ismo, $1.25 net 
This story of the doings of a group of country boys shows that 
along with his wonderful understanding of the boy nature, the 
author has, what is just as important, a vivid memory of his own 
boyhood. Without such a memory he could never ^ite as he 
does of the charmed circle of youth, into which no man may enter, 
no matter how well he may appreciate the faiths and superstitions 
of its members. The book has humor and incident, but its charm 
resides in the startling fidelity with which it recalls the very spirit 
of youth — of " the believing years." 

"Barbara's" New Story 
The Love that Lives 

By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT, Author of « Poppea of the 
Postoffice." With a frontispiece in colors by H. C. Wall. 

Decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.30 net 

Whenever Mabel Osgood Wright sets out to tell a love story she 
succeeds as do few novelists. Her new novel is simply a love 
story, full of the vivid character sketches for which she is so well 
known, and more rapid in action perhaps than anything she has 
ever written. It concerns the endeavors of a man and wife to 
mold the careers of their three children. How the individual 
instincts of the children turn them from the ways planned for them 
by their forebears, and, how they love, and in the end, prove their 
right of choice, is the backbone of the story. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



JAMES LANE ALLEN'S 

The Doctor's Christmas Eve ciotk, ismo, $i.so 

" Kentucky in its rural aspects and with its noble men and women forms the 
scenery for this romance of quaintness and homeliness which lovingly interprets 
the career of a country doctor who has lost faith in life but not in ideals. Inci- 
dentally the author has interpreted the new spirit of American childhood in its 
relation to the miracles and legends and lore of other lands and older times, 
which have through the centuries gathered about the great Christmas festival 
of the Nativity." — JVew York Times. 

" What so many have so long hoped Mr. Allen would do he has accomplished 
in this work, namely, a description of Kentucky and the blue-grass farms as 
seen by a yoimgster." — New York American, 

WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE'S 

A Certain Rich Man cioth, ismo, $1.^0 

" This novel has a message for to-day, and for its brilliant character drawing, 
and that gossipy desultory style of writing that stamps Mr. White's literary 
work, will earn a high place in fiction. It is good and clean and provides a 
vacation from the cares of the hour. It resembles a Chinese play, because it 
begins with the hero's boyhood, describes his long, busy life, and ends with his 
death. Its tone is often religious, never flippant, and one of its best assets is 
its glowing descriptions of the calm, serene beauties of nature. Its moral is 
that a magnate never did any real good with money." — Oregonian, Port- 
land, Ore. 

OWEN WISTER'S 

Members of the Family Decorated clotk, i2mo, $1.2$ net 

"Thrilling and unusual tales of life on the Western prairies. Mr. Wister has 
shown himself a master in this class of fiction." — Critic. 

i he Virginian Decorated cloth, i2mo, $i.SO net 

" The vanished West is made to live again by Owen Wister in a manner which 
makes his book easily the best that deals with the cowboy and the cattle coun- 
try. ... It is picturesque, racy, and, above all, it is original." — The Philadel- 
phia Press. 

Lady Bahimore cioth, i2mo, $i.so 

" After cowboy stories innumerable, ' The Virginian ' came as the last and defi- 
nite word on that romantic subject in our fiction. ' Lady Baltimore ' will serve 
in much the same way as the most subtly drawn picture of the old-world dig- 
nity of the vanished South." — The New York Evening Mail. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S NOVELS 

Each, cloth^ gilt tops and titles, $i.jo 

A Modern Chronicle illustrated 

This, Mr. Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine, is 
throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It 
is frankly a modern love story. 

" The most thorough and artistic work the author has yet turned out. A very 
interesting story and a faithful picture of character . . . one that will give rise 
to much discussion." — New York Sun, 

Mr. Crewe's Career illustrated 

" It is an honest and fair story. ... It is very interesting; and the heroine is 
a type of woman as fresh, original, and captivating as any that has appeared 
in American novels for a long time past." — TAe Outlook. 

The Celebrity Jn Episode 

"No such piece of inimitable comedy in a literary way has appeared for years. 
... It is the purest, keenest fun." — Chicago Inter- Ocean, 

% 

Richard Carvel illustrated 

" In breadth, massing of dramatic effect, depth of feeling, and rare wholesome- 
ness of spirit, it has seldom, if ever, been surpassed by an American romance." 

— Chicago Tribune, 

The Crossing illustrated 

"A thoroughly interesting book, packed with exciting adventure and senti- 
mental incident, yet faithful to historical fact both in detail and in spirit." 

— The Dial. 

The Crisis illustrated 

"A charming love story that never loses its interest. . . . The intense political 
bitterness, the intense patriotism of both parties, are shown understandingly." 

— Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. 

Coniston illustrated 

•' A lighter, gayer spirit and a deeper, tenderer touch than Mr. Churchill has 
ever achieved before. . . , One of the truest and finest transcripts of modern 
American life thus far achieved in our fiction." — Chicago Record-Herald. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publisliers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



Recent Works by Jack London 
SOUTH SEA TALES 

Illustrated, decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net 

Jack London's stories of the South Seas have a sense of reality 
about them which, even if the author were obscure and his goings 
and comings unknown, would prove that he had been on the 
ground and had himself taken part in the combats, physical and 
mental, which he describes. The present volume is a collection of 
vivid tales, which, both in their subject matter and in their setting, 
give the author free hand. 

THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK 

Illustrated with over 150 halftones from photographs 
by the author and a frontispiece in colors 

Decorated cloth, 8vo, boxed, $2.00 net 

One of the most adventurous voyages ever planned was that of 
Mr. Jack London's famous Snark, the little craft in which he and 
Mrs. London set forth to sail around the world. Mr. London has 
told the story in a fashion to bring out all the excitement of the 
cruise, its fun and exhilaration as well as its moments and days of 
breathless danger. 

ADVENTURE 

Decorated cloth, i2mo, $1.50 

This story is just what its title indicates — a rousing adventure tale, 
with lots of excitement, no little humor and considerable sentiment. 
While there is something doing from first to last, the reader is not 
conscious of that straining after effect which is evident in so many 
stories of rapid and exciting plot. 

WHEN GOD LAUGHS 

Illustrated, decorated cloth, i2mo. $1.50 

A remarkably stirring volume into which have entered all of the 
elements which have gone to make its author one of the most 
widely read novelists of his time. To depict graphically "the 
struggles of strong men in a world of strong men," a reviewer once 
declared to be Mr. London's special province. Certainly it is the 
province which he has selected for himself in this book. " When 
God Laughs," the initial tale, deals with a novel conception of the 
love of man and wife. What this love is, and what it brings to 
pass, make a yarn which is as finished and complete a piece of 
work as one often finds in the much discussed short-story field. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publisliers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork 



tr ^ ' 



